Zoe Saldaña revealed the one thing she wished she knew before starting out in Hollywood.
The ionic Avatar actress had a conversation with ELLE for their Women in Hollywood edition where she opened up about “the power of saying no.”
When she was asked about what she wished she knew before starting off her career in showbiz, Saldaña replied, “I wish I knew the power of saying no. You feel like you’re running out of time, especially if you’re a woman.”
“It was do it all, ‘Do as much as possible, say yes as much as you can,’ even when those moments were betraying my true feelings about how I felt about meeting someone or jumping into something really quickly,” the 46-year-old actress further added.
The Guardians of the Galaxy star continued, “One thing I try to tell a lot of younger women is (along the line of what) something that I heard Jane Fonda say in an interview: You can always say no.”
As soon as the actress herself learned how to imply these boundaries, she has received impeccable opportunities throughout her career such as working with Steven Spielberg on The Terminal to James Cameron on Avatar, J.J. Abrams on Star Trek and James Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy.
“Those are those moments where through that struggle that I have with loving myself, I’m repurposed. I’m compelled to see myself as others are seeing me, and the sacrifices that I’m putting in every day are being rewarded. It’s a shot of oxygen into my lungs, and it reshapes me and raises me; it reconnects me to my higher self,” Zoe Saldaña further mentioned.
