Zoe Saldaña

Saldaña has been married to Italian artist Marco Perego since 2013. Perego adopted her surname after their marriage, and the couple have three sons, including twins Cy and Bowie and their younger son Zen. Saldaña has said that Spanish, Italian, and English are spoken around their children.

In 2016, Saldaña said that she had Hashimoto's thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease, as do her mother and sisters. She also supports FINCA International and founded BESE, a digital media platform focused on positive stories within the Latino community and addressing a lack of diversity in mainstream media.

Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Saldaña grew up in Queens and spent part of her childhood in the Dominican Republic. Her father, Aridio Saldaña, was Dominican, and her mother, Asalia Nazario, is Puerto Rican. Saldaña and her sisters, Cisely and Mariel, were raised speaking English and Spanish. After her father died in a car accident when she was nine, she lived with relatives in the Dominican Republic while her mother remained in New York.

Saldaña studied ballet and other dance forms at ECOS Espacio de Danza Academy. After returning to New York at 17, she performed with the Faces theater group and the New York Youth Theater. Her appearance in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat led to recruitment by a talent agency, and her dance training helped her secure the role of ballet student Eva Rodriguez in Center Stage (2000).

Her first screen appearance was a guest role in Law & Order in 1999. She followed Center Stage with Get Over It, Crossroads, and Drumline in 2001 and 2002, then played the pirate Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). In The Terminal (2004), directed by Steven Spielberg, she played immigration officer Dolores Torres, a Star Trek fan.

Saldaña's career reached a new level in 2009 when she played Nyota Uhura in J. J. Abrams's Star Trek and Neytiri in James Cameron's Avatar. She met Nichelle Nichols to learn more about Uhura's background and portrayal. For Avatar, Saldaña performed through motion capture, and she trained for six months in horseback riding, archery, and wushu martial arts. She later reprised Neytiri in Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash.

Saldaña returned as Uhura in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016). She also played Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023). Unlike Neytiri, Gamora was portrayed with makeup rather than computer-generated imagery or performance capture.

Her other franchise and genre credits include the voice role of Captain Celaeno in My Little Pony: The Movie, Adelina Fortnight in Missing Link, and Rosa Hernández in the animated musical Vivo. She performed vocals for the song “The Songcord” on Avatar: The Way of Water.

Alongside her franchise work, Saldaña led the action films The Losers (2010) and Colombiana (2011), and appeared in Death at a Funeral, Out of the Furnace, Live by Night, I Kill Giants, and The Adam Project. Her television work includes the miniseries Rosemary's Baby, From Scratch, and Maya and the Three, in which she voiced the title character. She also stars as Joe McNamara in the Paramount+ series Lioness.

Saldaña portrayed jazz musician Nina Simone in the 2016 biopic Nina. Simone's family criticized the casting, and Saldaña later apologized for taking the role. In Emilia Pérez (2024), she played Rita Mora Castro, a Mexican lawyer who helps a cartel boss obtain gender-affirming surgery. The role required her to speak and sing in Spanish.

For Emilia Pérez, Saldaña won the Golden Globe, BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She became the first Dominican American actress to win an Academy Award. She also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018.