Zoe Saldana (born June 19, 1978, Passaic, New Jersey, U.S.) is an American actress who found her greatest success performing in science-fiction and superhero movies.
Saldana spent much of her childhood in Queens, New York. However, when she was nine years old, her father died in a car accident, and she moved with her family to the Dominican Republic, her father’s home country. There she studied dance at the Ecos Espacio de Danza dance studio. When she was 17, she returned to New York City and began performing with youth theatre groups. After two small guest appearances (1999) on the television series Law & Order, Saldana was cast in a prominent role in the movie Center Stage (2000), about students at a New York City ballet school.
She next appeared in a series of teen flicks, including Get Over It (2001) and the Britney Spears vehicle Crossroads (2002), and then had a supporting role in the higher-profile movie Drumline (2002). Saldana had a small but memorable part as a female pirate in the surprise hit movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), and she played an immigration agent in Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal (2004), which starred Tom Hanks as a man forced to live in an airport terminal. For the next few years, however, Saldana appeared in only minor movies and TV fare.
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