Zoe Saldaña is one of the few people on this planet to say she is an Academy Award winner. On Sunday night, the 46-year-old won her first Oscar for best supporting actress for the film "Emilia Perez." It’s an incredible end to the Awards Season with the powerful Latina winning at Cannes, the SAG Awards, the Critics Choice, the BAFTAs, and the Golden Globes.
"I think it's every time that I went after a part and I didn’t. I didn't get it, and I cared so much, and I was so heartbroken for sometimes a day, sometimes a week. But I got up again."
Backstage in the interview room, HOLA! Asked the Oscar winner, “In Spanish, we have the saying 'Lo que será, será.' Today, you're here with your first Oscar. If you could go back to a moment in your life and tell that younger Zoe Saldaña that everything she's going through will make her stronger and lead her to this moment, when would that be?”
After taking a breath, the Oscar winner answered, "I think it's every time that I went after a part and I didn’t. I didn't get it, and I cared so much, and I was so heartbroken for sometimes a day, sometimes a week. But I got up again. So at the end of the day, if I don't act, if I don't do my art, then what am I? Who am I? And realizing that it's not about the win."
The Avatar star continued, "When you learn to let that go and it is about the work day in and day out, the day that you do win, you just have a deeper appreciation for it and you feel that you have appreciated every experience and every moment that has led you here."
Zoe's role in Emilia Perez
Saldaña plays the role of Rita Mora Castro, a dissatisfied and underpaid lawyer living in Mexico whose life takes a 180-degree turn after meeting Manitas del Monte, a drug lord who asks her for help in transitioning from male to female, escaping the life he built in Mexico for a new one.
In an exclusive interview with HOLA! before the film's release, the Center Stage reflected on how the experience was using her first love, dance, in the film. "I was able to carry the skills that I had from dance into roles like Neytiri in Avatar and Cataleya in Colombiana. But, you know, after becoming a mom, the yearning to go back and do that was just like evergreen. I never imagined that it was going to come in the form of Jacques Audiard and Emilia Pérez. So it was a lot of fun," she shared.