Zoe Saldaña has ambitions to jump into the action genre as a director, and one big franchise that would be of interest to her would be that of James Bond. As the Bond franchise prepares to unveil news of who will succeed Daniel Craig in the role of Britain’s finest spy, Saldaña has interestingly thrown her hat in the ring as someone looking to scale the heights to direct a Bond movie of the future.
Speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival, Saldaña discussed her love of crime and action movies, inspired in part by her love of Michael Mann’s Heat and Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer, and revealed that she would love to make an action movie as her directorial debut. As per Variety, she also made a note that the Bond franchise has been missing a women’s touch in the director’s chair, suggesting that she would definitely consider taking on that challenge at some point in her career.
“I’ve never seen a woman direct James Bond. I like The Equalizer. I watch crime shows, and, so, maybe in the future. I’ve always been drawn to heist themes. Heat is a film that I need to watch at least once a year and analyze it, and the way that Michael Mann just pairs it all together, the way that everybody performed it. So I would love to start with an action-heist sort of thing.”
Zoe Saldaña Has an Impressive Resume in Front of the Camera
Although Saldaña clearly has plenty of ideas about where she would like to see her career go next, her journey so far has been one that many actors could only dream of. Despite making her feature film debut back in 2000, and having early roles in big movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Terminal, and Vantage Point, it was in 2009 that her breaks began to fall thick and fast. That year, she took on the role of Uhura in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and made her first appearance in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise as Neytiri.
Several movies on, and she took another huge leap with the role of Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy. That role would ultimately lead her to an achievement that is probably not going to be beaten by anyone other than her, as her roles in Avengers: Endgame and Avatar: The Way of Water made her the only actress to have appeared in all three of the highest grossing movies of all time, all of which topped $2 billion at the box office. Quite an impressive feat for an actress still very much in the prime of her career.
Saldaña will next be seen in the musical crime comedy Emilia Pérez, in which she plays a lawyer helping a Mexican cartel leader undergo sex reassignment surgery to escape authorities, and the second season of the Taylor Sheridan series, Special Ops: Lioness, which follows Saldaña’s CIA officer Joe as she balances her professional and personal lives in the modern world where a war on terror is her main focus. Next year, Saldaña will return to the role of Neytiri in Avatar: Fire and Ash, which is currently slated for release on December 19, 2025, and could very well give the actress her fourth $2 billion box office earner if the Avatar spell has not worn off by then.
Emilia Pérez
will receive a limited theatrical run in the U.S. from November 1, and will debut on Netflix on November 13.