Zoe Saldaña: Spielberg 'restored my faith' in big movies after 'Pirates of the Caribbean'

The "Pirates" life wasn't for Zoe Saldaña.

During a conversation on Saturday at the BFI London Film Festival, the "Avatar" star, 46, reflected on having a negative experience starring in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl." Saldaña played the pirate Anamaria in the original 2003 film, but she did not return for any of its sequels.

"I knew with that experience the kind of people that I wanted to work with," she said, according to Variety.

"The crew and the cast, they're 99% of the time super marvelous," she added, according to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. "But if the studio and the producers and the director, they're not leading with kindness and awareness and consideration, then that big of a production can become a really bad experience and you may tip overboard. And I kind of did."

"Pirates" was one of Saldaña's earliest movie credits at the start of her career. Her next film was "The Terminal," in which she played an officer with Customs and Border Protection. She credited the film's director, Steven Spielberg, with making her realize working on big movies doesn't always have to be so bad.

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"I worked with Steven Spielberg eight months later, and he restored my faith that big can also be great," Saldaña said, per the outlets.

The "Star Trek" actress has spoken about her negative "Pirates" experience before, telling Entertainment Weekly in 2022 the production was "just a little too big for me," and "the pace of it was a little too fast."

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"I walked away not really having a good experience from it overall," she told the outlet. "I felt like I was lost in the trenches of it a great deal, and I just didn't feel like that was okay."

Speaking with BBC Radio 1 last year, Saldaña blamed this bad experience on "poor management." But she has said that Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of the franchise, has since apologized. "Years later, I was able to meet with Jerry Bruckheimer, who apologized that I had that experience cause he really wants everyone to have a good experience on his projects," she told Entertainment Weekly in 2022. "That really moved me."

Despite the difficult production, Saldaña previously told BuzzFeed UK she's happy with the movie itself.

"It was too big of a machine for me, and it was too out of control," she said. "What I see that transpired on screen I'm very proud of. How difficult it was to get there, I don't ever want to go back."

Since then, Saldaña has had key roles in some of the highest-grossing blockbusters of all time, starring as Uhura in the most recent "Star Trek" film trilogy, Gamora in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" series and two "Avengers" films, and Neytiri in James Cameron's "Avatar" franchise.