The American actress of Dominican origin Zoe Saldana took the golden mask of the Bafta for the best cast actress for her participation in the Jacques Audiard Emilia Pérez’s film on Sunday.
At the Ceremony of the Awards of the British Academy of Cinematographic Arts, at the Royal Festival Hall London, Saldaña, 46, took the prize for his interpretation of a lawyer who attends a Mexican drug trafficker who undergoes surgery gender change.
Saldaña, who had three Dominican grandparents and one Puerto Rican, said after receiving the prize that lawyer Rita was “familiar.”
“A woman overlooked”, who was not given the credit she deserves “as she herself has sometimes felt in her own personal life.
“It became a special character for me,” said Saldaña, adding that the fact that the film was in Spanish, his first language, allowed him to “connect my culture with my art, was significant for me.”
The award achieved in London is the fourth obtained by Zoe Saldaña for his role in Emilia Pérez, after having won the best actress trophies at the Cannes Festival and Best Actress of Distributed in the Golden Globes and in the Awards of the Cinematographic critic in the United States.
Although she was born in New Jersey and grew up in New York, Zoe Saldaña spent part of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, after her father’s death, occurred when the actress was 9 years old.
The other nominated for Best Actress of Delivery at the Bafta Awards were the Americans Jamie Lee Curtis (The Last Showgirl), Selena Gómez (Emilia Pérez) and Ariana Grande (Wicked), the British Felicity Jones (The Brutalist) and the Italian Isabella Rossellini (Conclave).
In the Oscar, Ariana Grande, Felicity Jones and Isabella Rossellini, in addition to the American Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown) will have again rivals.
Zoe Saldaña has participated throughout his career in more than 80 films and almost 40 television series, including Avatar (2009), Star Trek (2009) and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
