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Emilia Pérez star Zoe Saldaña paid tribute to the directors who’ve believed in her, like Avatar filmmaker James Cameron, who sent her a congratulatory text after she won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.
Speaking in the Globes press room after the show, Saldaña said she was “indebted” to the directors who “decide to bet on me and it works.” That, of course, included Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard, but also Cameron, who gave Saldaña one of her biggest early breaks when he cast her as Neytiri in Avatar way back in the late 2000s.
“I was sitting in the audience and I received a message from James Cameron, who’s somewhere in New Zealand right now cutting Avatar: Fire and Ash,” Saldaña told the press, getting visibly emotional. “And he, after all these years, believes in me. That, to me, gives me… it nourishes my desire to continue growing as an artist.”
Last October, Cameron backed Saldaña for a big awards season run in a Variety cover story. “I’ve worked with Academy Award-winning actors, and there’s nothing that Zoe’s doing that’s of a caliber less than that,” he said, adding: “She can go from regal to, in two nanoseconds, utterly feral. The woman is ferocious. She is a freaking lioness.”
Saldaña’s Best Supporting Actress trophy was one of four prizes Emilia Pérez took home at the 82nd Golden Globes (the most of any other film). It also won Best Picture, Musical or Comedy, Best Non-English Language Film, and Best Original Song for “El Mal” (written by Clément Ducol, Camille, and Audiard).
