Beautiful Zoe Saldana has built a career playing b----- babes — including Lt. Nyota Uhura in the Star Trek film series, Gamora in the Guardians of the Galaxy flicks and Neytiri in Avatar. Her box office blockbusters have grossed more than $11 billion worldwide — and Saldana, 45, is poised to add to that astonishing total with the recently released Avatar: The Way of Water. She’s reprised her role as the blue-skinned alien heroine in the new movie, which is the second installment of James Cameron’s sci-fi franchise.
Here are ten things you don’t know about the New Jersey–born performer.
1. Saldana calls herself “threequarters Dominican and one-quarter Puerto Rican” — and is fluent in both English and Spanish.
2. She’s left-handed — just like her two sisters.
3. Her first job was at a fast-food burger joint, and she recalls, “I liked working in the drive-thru.”
4. Ballet was once her passion, but she admits quitting because she didn’t "have the feet" to be a principal dancer.
5. Saldana carries vitamins in her purse because always forgets to take them in the morning.
6. Her go-to karaoke song is Janis Joplin’s "Piece of My Heart," which she says, “always gets the crowd going.”
7. Saldana can move her eyeballs in different directions and says, "That’s my claim to fame."
8. Her favorite movie is director Tony Scott’s 1983 vampire flick, The Hunger.
9. Saldana has Hashimoto’s disease, a treatable autoimmune condition, which affects the thyroid and can cause tiredness, weight gain and muscle weakness.
10. Her biggest fear is drowning.