How Afro-Latina Zoe Saldaña recently became the 1st actor to have four movies earn over $2B at box office

Last week when the new movie, Avatar: The Way of Water, surpassed $2 billion at the worldwide box office, Zoe Saldaña became the first actor to have four movies make more than $2 billion. 2009’s Avatar, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame and 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War are the other three movies she starred in that also earned that figure, People reported.

James Cameron, the director of Avatar: The Way of Water, has also become the first director to have three films make over $2 billion. The first was Avatar and Titanic was the second.

Saldaña plays Gamora in Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War and Neytiri in Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water. The Afro-Latina actress recently commented on her roles in franchise movies. “I’m very grateful for the opportunities that they provided, from collaborating with amazing directors and getting to meet cast members that I consider friends and getting to play a role that fans, especially children, love,” the 44-year-old told Women’s Wear Daily.

Born in New Jersey to a Dominican father and a mother who is from Puerto Rico, Saldaña has also said that she has Haitian and Lebanese ancestry. She started acting in Pirates of the Caribbean, Law and Order, Star Trek and The Terminal, and today she’s become a great success with a reported net worth of $40 million.

At the young age of nine, Saldaña fell in love with ballet. “Ballet has always been my first passion, but I simply didn’t have the feet, and I have way too much pride and ambition to just be in the corps,” she told Vanity Fair. She performed with the Faces theater troupe in plays with themes such as substance abuse and sex.

Saldaña later joined a talent agency where she landed her first big-screen role as Eva Rodriguez, the talented ballet dancer in the film Center Stage (2000). The self-professed sci-fi fanatic’s breakthrough came in 2004 when she was 25, in the Spielberg-directed film The Terminal.

She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018. Saldaña was ranked #29 on Maxim magazine’s Hot 100 Women of 2014 list and ranked #91 in the 2011 FHM list of “100 Sexiest Women in the World”.