Zoe Saldana covers the June issue of Allure Magazine, and I have no idea if this is the “naked” issue or whatever, but Zoe completely dropped trou for the photoshoot. She also dramatically changed up her hair, and I really like the long, bouncy curls on her. She rarely wears her hair curly on red carpets, and she should start because it makes her look younger and less… drawn. As for the Allure interview… well, I don’t care for Zoe’s personality that much. She reminds me of Rooney Mara with a dash of Goop – there’s a smugness there, an unearned pretentiousness. You can see the Allure slideshow here, and here are some highlights from the interview:
I don’t think she knows what “androgynous” means: “I might end up with a woman raising my children. That’s how androgynous I am.”
On the idea of raising a child with another woman as her partner? “Yes, I was raised that open.”
Has she had a relationship with another woman? She deliberates, then says, “Promise me one thing: You’re going to ask this question [in the article]—if you choose to, just put three dots as my response. That’s it.”
Dating actors: “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.”
She doesn’t “test” relationships: “If I have something good in front of me, it doesn’t matter if it’s a person or a pair of shoes, I’m not going to test something else. It’s insecure and it’s immature.”
Saldana is emphatic about the difficulties she faced when she filmed Pirates of the Caribbean:The Curse of the Black Pearl The “leadership,” she says, “pick[ed] who to be nice to and who to dispose of because they’re not important. Those are signs of a very poor character.” Then she adds: “I can be a nobody according to you at that time. But I’ve always been a somebody.”
The criticism about Zoe playing Nina Simone: “Let me tell you, if Elizabeth Taylor can be Cleopatra, I can be Nina—I’m sorry,” says Saldana, her tone not in the least apologetic. “It doesn’t matter how much backlash I will get for it. I will honor and respect my black community because that’s who I am.”
She’s more concerned about misogyny than racism: The actress is actually far less concerned about her skin shade than about being what she calls “a woman in a man’s world.” She says, “It’s hard enough to be a woman on this earth. So to be an American or black or Latina, it’s arbitrary compared to our battles as women.”
Saldana has found a balance of ambition and self-acceptance. “Now, in the last few years of my life, I’m actually claiming what I want and not being afraid that I’m jinxing it, that it might not happen, that I might be disappointed if it doesn’t happen,” she says. “It’s OK to say, ‘This is what I want’—and go after it. And if it doesn’t happen, it’s OK. Be a reasonable person with yourself.”
Is she comparing herself to Elizabeth Taylor?! No, I don’t think she is, I think she’s just saying if Elizabeth Taylor can play an Egyptian queen, Zoe can play Nina Simone…? As for her “got the t-shirt” comment – yeah, I doubt there’s much love lost between her and Bradley Cooper. I never really understood their relationship in the first place, and Zoe ended up a lot like Renee Zellweger in that Zoe spent most of the relationship with Bradley’s mother anyway.
Definition of androgynous: “having the characteristics or nature of both male and female.”
Photos courtesy of Allure.
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