Zoe Saldaña Felt Like She Signed Her Life Away for the ‘Avatar’ Movies
Actor Zoe Saldaña knew starring in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise was going to be a commitment. But it was a commitment she didn’t have to think twice about after being offered the role.
Zoe Saldaña was excited about being a part of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ franchise
Saldaña didn’t just sign up for one Avatar film. Cameron always planned for the first movie to spawn several sequels. But there would be a long gap between the original Avatar and its successor Way of the Water. One of the reasons why the sequel took so long to reach theaters was because Cameron needed to develop the right technology.
“Jim was finally able to crack that challenge — that whole thing that you can’t imitate water, virtually, through performance capture,” Saldaña once told Variety. “That was just a challenge that he had taken upon himself, and it took him years, and he did it. He did it. It’s powerful, it’s compelling.”
Because of how expansive the Avatar franchise was, Cameron’s own actors would’ve had to wait years between the movies as well. But Saldaña didn’t mind being locked down to the sci-fi franchise, and instead looked forward to it.
“We signed our lives away for whatever was going to happen,” she once told Access (via Female First). “It was the kind of thing that, had they not asked me to sign, I would have offered myself regardless. Any excuse to go back and reunite with Jim and the rest of the cast, especially Sam [Worthington] and Sigourney [Weaver], is something that I won’t even hesitate [to do].”
Zoe Saldaña had a very strange audition for ‘Avatar’
Saldaña once recalled what it was like screening for Cameron’s Avatar personally. Speaking on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she revealed that she initially wasn’t really sure about doing the movie. She wasn’t immediately sold by the pitch of the film. Still, she decided to give Avatar a shot, which might’ve resulted in one of her strangest auditions.
“I was still living in New York at the time, and they would put me on tape,” she said. “Sometimes it was like ‘Bring some tight stuff, I want you to climb and do some cartwheels.’ And I’m like ‘Okay.’ So I would come in, it’s like, ‘We’ll just play. Let’s move some furniture.’”
The Marvel star believed she managed to land the role for reasons beyond just her acting.
“I feel like I was able to book the part because of my dance background. Then one time, they called me in and I put myself on tape again for them, and they were like, ‘Just make all these sounds.’ I’m thinking like, James Cameron, a robot warrior princess that’s in the jungle, and I’m rolling my Rs. I don’t know what this is, but I dig it,” she continued.
After scoring the role, Saldaña was given the full script of the movie, which was so detailed she had trouble understanding it. But the highlight of her experience was when Cameron showed Saldaña a model of her Avatar character.
“Then Jim walks in, and he was so nice. He said, ‘Are you ready to meet yourself?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ At that moment, my soul left my body. Then he walks me to his office, I see this big wheel of a ship, I had no idea it was the Titanic wheel. I see the arm of the Terminator. I just, I was like oh my God, I’m having an out of body experience,” she remembered. “On the coffee table was a sculpture of my character, Neytiri. As I’m observing the sculpture, he’s sitting across from me like observing me. And I’m thinking like, ‘That’s not weird, don’t act weird.’”
