She’s been in the highest grossing movie of all time and boarded the Starship Enterprise, so there’s no doubting that US actress Zoe Saldana has what it takes to survive in the action world.
This week she takes on a different type of action, as assassin Cataleya in Colombiana. She plays an orphan raised as a killer after seeing her parents die.
“There’s an anger and a purpose to Cataleya that has solidified in her, and this purpose is what keeps her going,” the actress said. “More than money, more than happiness even, is this drive for revenge.”
The film contains many action scenes, and Saldana reveals the secret behind making it realistic is simple - practice.
“Cataleya’s style of fighting is much less graceful than a lot of things you will see on screen, so that was hard to achieve,” she said. “This character has been brought up by her uncle, who is essentially a thug, and so there’ll be that style of street fighting she has been brought up with mixed in with stealth.
“It was difficult to make it look real, I trained for a while because to look authentic you have to make sure you’re confident in every fight sequence.”
In 2009 she dazzled audiences as Neytiri, princess of the Na’vi in James Cameron’s Avatar, and played Lieutenant Uhura in the remake of Star Trek in the same year, and with sequels in the offing, Saldana could become a regular presence on our screens. Colombiana is out now.
