Zoe Saldaña Felt “Stuck” in Genre Roles
Zoe Saldaña: "I've been stuck in Franchises for 10 Years"
BlabberingCollector | Jan 4, 2023 |
In an interview with Women’s Wear Daily, Zoe Saldaña, star of Star Trek, MCU’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avatar, said she was “artistically stuck” since being a part of the top three out of five top-earning movies of all time (Avatar, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame).
Saldaña states:
“There was a time where it was so exciting to seem [like I was] and to know that I was one of the hardest working people,” Saldaña says. “Now I’m actually embarrassed because this whole idea of productivity and overproducing yourself too much is just a lot.”
The actress, worth over $35 million, continued with:
“I feel that for the last 10 years of my life, I’ve been just stuck. I felt stuck doing these franchises. I’m very grateful for the opportunities that they provided, from collaborating with amazing directors and getting to meet cast members that I consider friends and getting to play a role that fans, especially children, love. But it also meant that I felt artistically stuck in my craft of not being able to expand or grow or challenge myself by playing different sorts of genres and different roles. So this is something that I wanted to do for a very long time. And wrestling, too, with this pressure that society puts on women that your youth is gone as soon as you have children and you go into your 40s.
But today, now that I’m 44, I’ve been able to have these opportunities, and I took control over my aging and I took control over my voice and how I consider myself as a woman. And I’m so happy that I’m able to collaborate with filmmakers and producers and people in this industry that want that for women, that want women to be ageless and who don’t fetishize women’s youth. And so it’s interesting. It’s really interesting.”
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Saldaña felt “stuck” playing these iconic roles and threw in a slash of “down with the patriarchy” with “youth is gone” when you have children and “don’t fetishize women’s youth.”
What do you make of Zoe Saldaña’s comments? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments (1)
Newsflash, everyone, at some point, feels stuck in their day job. I find her comments honest. For the rest of us, we will never know what it’s like to be some top actor in top projects. Being typecast or stuck led many actors down a dark path. So many, that I started to appreciate those who simply show up and do a ton of sequels just for the work and pay. You’d be a fool to turn down another role if the finances are guaranteed. I like her comments, because, for all that grandiose spectacle and wonderment of big movies, the role is just a role and the actor is only a mortal human. Very few are larger than life.