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Zoe Saldaña Rebooted: Why the Action Star Broke Her ‘Cycle of Sequels’ for ‘Emilia Pérez’ — And Her One Wish for Marvel’s Next Gamora

Zoe Saldaña felt stuck in her career after acting in so many blockbuster Hollywood sequels. Then "Emilia Perez" arrived and everything changed.

Set against the brutality of Mexico’s cartels, it’s the story of a group of women who want to chart a course away from all the violence, including Saldaña as an idealistic lawyer and Karla Sofía Gascón as the titular Emilia Pérez, a drug lord who starts a new life after undergoing gender-affirming surgery. But “Emilia Pérez” was everything she had been yearning for — particularly the chance to work in Spanish, which is her first language (she is Afro-Latino, of Puerto Rican and Dominican heritage), and to dance again.So, she was determined to fight for the role, which meant auditioning for the director, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, and singing live over Zoom. Founded in 2011, Baby2Baby has distributed more than 450 million essentials — including diapers, formula, clothing and cribs — to children in homeless shelters, domestic violence programs, foster care agencies, hospitals, underserved school districts and disaster areas.

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