14 DAY TRIAL // She’s considered one of the most gorgeous and sophisticated young stars in Hollywood right now, as well as one of the most promising, but Zoe Saldana says she’s not really a girlie girl. Quite on the contrary, she often finds herself thinking like a man, but that’s explainable by having grown up with her sister surrounded by men, as the actress herself explains for Siempre Mujer.
Zoe is now pushing the DVD release of “Avatar,” the film that literally launched her career (which, of course, is not to say that it was the biggest feature film role of her career). Speaking with the aforementioned magazine, the star opens up about the ongoing misconceptions about her, including those related to race and her style. Though she always comes across as a very elegant and delicate woman, Zoe would rather define herself by her masculine side, she says.
“I have too much of one! […] It’s that my sisters and I spent all our time amongst men. We were very popular with them. Our way of thinking is very masculine. If you want to punish me, send me to get a manicure or pedicure, or dress me in a skirt or shorts, and I would die. But if you dress me in jeans and a button down blouse I feel very [beautiful], feminine and powerful. It has to do with my personality. That’s why I think I’m very attracted to men who are masculine but in tune with their feminine side. I’ve been with my partner for 10 years!” Zoe says for the aforementioned publication.
As for how Hollywood and showbiz in general uses race to define her, Saldana would prefer to let her work and her personality do the talk for her. “I’m just Zoe. Not a little bit Dominican, not a little bit Puerto Rican, none of that silliness…I am what you want me to be if that’s what it takes for you to overcome your insecurities. As a Latina, I think we should be very proud of our heritage. We tend to look for European roots and reject the indigenous and the African, and that is disgusting. Being Latin is a mix of everything. I want my people to not be as insecure, and to adore what we are because it’s beautiful,” she says.
As we also informed you a while back, in another recent interview, Saldana lashed out at the practices in Hollywood where one black actress could be told she was not “light” skinned enough for a role. This is racism and it’s common with most major movie studios, the actress was saying at the time, in a bid to shed some light on the matter.