Zoe Yadira Zaldana Nazario was born on June 19, 1978 in Passaic, New Jersey to Aridio Saldaña, a Dominican father and Asalia Nazario, a Puerto Rican mother, She is of Dominican, Lebanese, Indian, Irish and Jamaican descent. She has two sisters, Mariel Saldana and Cisely Saldana. Zoe Saldana and her family soon settled in Queens, New York where she was raised. When Zoe was nine, her father died in a car accident, and her mother moved with Zoe and her sisters to the Dominican Republic – where the family stayed for 7 years.
While in the Republic, Saldana took ballet lessons. She ultimately returned to the United States and joined the Faces Theater Program in Brooklyn, New York. While there, she won an uncredited appearance in a 1999 episode of Law & Order, the long-running NBC series executive produced by Rene Balcer. She left the Faces program after making her feature film debut in the 2000 musical drama Center Stage, co-starring Star Trek: Insurrection actress Donna Murphy.
Zoe Saldana is in early talks to join the ranks of Luc Besson’s famous movie femmes, playing an assassin in Colombiana. Colombiana is an upcoming action drama film starring Zoe Saldana and Michael Vartan. The film is slated for release on August 26, 2011.
Filming began around August 20 2010 in locations including Chicago, New Orleans, Mexico, Colombia and Paris. The film was produced by Luc Besson's EuropaCorp company and the script was written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen.
Zoe Saldana portray as Cataleya Restrepo, a young woman who, after witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota, grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders that she hopes will lead her to her ultimate target: the mobster responsible for her parents' death.
Gallery :
