Zoe Saldaña's grandmother knew she would see her granddaughter dancing on stage at Lincoln Center one day.
Zoe Saldaña Says Her Grandmother Predicted She Would Star as Eva Rodriguez in 'Center Stage': 'Brought It Full Circle'
Zoe Saldaña's grandmother knew she was destined to become a star!
During the Emilia Pérez actress' Tuesday, October 29, appearance on The View, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin reminded Saldana, 46, that the 25th anniversary of the classic film Center Stage, where she played dancer Eva Rodriguez, is coming up next year.
Zoe Saldaña's grandmother knew she would go on to star in 'Center Stage.'
“I love Center Stage!” she gushed over the 2000 movie that follows young performers in training at an academy based on the School of American Ballet in New York. "We were shooting it in Lincoln Center, which was this place that I used to go there all the time as a little girl with my grandma. And my gram would go, ‘One day, one day, you’re going to be in there.’ And it all brought it full circle.”
Although making the film was a pivotal moment, it made the Colombiana star want to shift her focus to acting. "It was about ballet, which was such a big part of my life,” she revealed. “But I needed to sort of transition into other forms of art. And I feel like Center Stage kind of solidified that.”
Zoe Saldaña was 21 when she filmed 'Center Stage.'
While the fan-favorite movie may have been about cut-throat entertainers, Saldana has been anything but that in her career despite the adversity she's had to overcome. "I don’t want to be the face of everything. I’m an extremely private person. I want others to shine. I want to be that pioneer who creates the stage so that others can step on it and be who they need to be," the mother-of-three explained in a 2023 interview.
"When you start out and you are a person of color and you are female, you feel like you work twice as hard and it takes twice as long. We are finally reaping the benefits of all the hard labor. I honestly feel like we’re just getting started," Saldana noted. “There is no retirement, you know; Latinos are like that. You work until the day you die. It’s part of life. It’s part of your culture."
Making 'Center Stage' made Zoe Saldaña want to focus on acting rather than ballet.
Even when the Crossroads alum was young and unsure of herself, she was always striving to look like she knew what she was doing. “There was a level of exhaustion that I felt because I was always putting up this front of overconfidence,” Saldaña noted in a recent interview.
"All of a sudden, I felt compelled to reassess myself and question whether or not what I have been creating and putting out there matches up to that confidence. And no, it didn’t," she said. “Realizing that it was all stemming from insecurity — because I always felt like an imposter — was very overwhelming.”
Zoe Saldaña opened up about suffering from imposter syndrome.
Variety conducted the 2024 interview with Saldaña.