Zoe Saldana was seen as Dolores Torres in Steven Spielberg's 2004 comedy-drama The Terminal, alongside Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
While speaking at a Screen Talk at the BFI London Film Festival on October 12, Zoe Saldana opened up about working with Steven Spielberg and said that the celebrated filmmaker restored her "faith in filmmaking."
Before playing Dolores in The Terminal, Saldana was working on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and noted that her experience on the set was not the best.
Although the crew, and the cast were "super marvelous", the producers and the director were not leading with "kindness", "awareness" and "consideration" as per Saldana causing her to "tip overboard." The actress walked away and producer Jerry Bruckheimer personally apologized to her later.
She then began working on The Terminal, and while comparing both experiences, Saldana said,
"I worked with Steven Spielberg eight months later, and he restored my faith that big can also be great."
Saldana recalled that she felt "so good and so safe" on the sets of The Terminal.
Zoe Saldana on her new movie Emilia Perez
Zoe Saldana has been currently making press rounds for her new movie Emilia Perez which released on August 21, 2024 in France.
The movie is a musical crime comedy featuring the life of Emilia, a drug cartel leader who uses Rita to forge her death and undergo gender affirming surgery. While talking about the movie's feature on trans lives, Zoe said,
"Yes, there's a trans life in this movie and these individuals navigate worlds that are very dark and dangerous, but that's not the overall takeaway. It's a story of four women being on this journey to become their most authentic selves and be free and be loved."
During the movie's London Film Festival premiere on October 12, Selena Gomez who plays the role of Jesse Del Monte said the movie allowed her to "feel,"
"I should be happy in my life. I should be passionate. I should be frustrated when it's my time to feel frustrated. It allowed me to feel."
Saldana said the movie gave her the opportunity to "reconnect" with a part of herself that she had said good-bye to long ago. The movie is in Spanish and features a lot of singing and dancing, which Saldana misses despite her successful career primarily in action films.