The Oscar winner shares why “Avatar: Fire and Ash” demanded more from her than the past films.

Zoe Saldaña gives her most dramatic* Avatar* performance yet in Fire and Ash: ‘It was just hard to be in her skin’

The Oscar winner shares why "Avatar: Fire and Ash" demanded more from her than the past films.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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on December 17, 2025 3:32 p.m. ET

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Zoe Saldaña on set of 'Avatar: Fire and Ash'. Credit:

Mark Fellman/20th Century Studios

- Zoe Saldaña shares how *Avatar: Fire and Ash* demanded more from her than the previous film.

- The Oscar winner behind Neytiri explains why "it was just hard to be in her skin."

- James Cameron discusses the cycle of hatred and loss that consumes his lead character.

The title of *Avatar: Fire and Ash* speaks directly to Zoe Saldaña's Neytiri. Writer/director James Cameron often talks about "fire" as a symbol for "hatred, anger, violence" and "ash" as representing what comes after: "grief, loss."

From the ash of grief, caused by the loss of her son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in 2023's *Avatar: The Way of Water*, Neytiri succumbs to the fire of hate — hate for all Sky People, but especially the young Spider (Jack Champion), the human friend of her Na'vi children.

"It's a deceptively simple title, but it's not simple to me because thematically it's about that unbroken cycle," Cameron tells **. "People are stuck in an unresolved part of that cycle. Nature is going down the same path in this story. She has hatred that's fueled by loss, and Spider walks right into the crosshairs of her hatred."

Saldaña doesn't believe Cameron was quietly structuring the entire movie, the third of the franchise, around her, but she agrees *Avatar: Fire and Ash* demanded more from her, leading to the Oscar winner's most dramatic performance yet for the franchise.

On the Miami stop of the movie's global press tour in mid-December, the *Emilia Pérez* and *Guardians of the Galaxy* star acknowledges, "It was just hard to be in her skin.... Neytiri's a character that, since the beginning, has always been defined by her faith. In this installment of *Avatar*, we find her completely lost and heartbroken and almost enraged. Her hatred has gotten the best of her, and this blind fury is even challenging her faith."

Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) in 'Avatar: Fire and Ash'.

Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

The *Avatar* team shot movies 2 and 3 on top of each other in New Zealand, beginning in 2017. Saldaña remembers the emotional whiplash she experienced during that time while moving back and forth between her home and work lives.

The actress gave birth to her son, Zen Anton Hilario, in December of the previous year, and her twins, Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio Perego-Saldaña, were 3 years old by the time shooting commenced. "My children were so little, and I was so happy to have my family," she recalls. "I would say goodbye to them and drive to work and incarnate this woman that was experiencing such trauma, so much loss."

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Neytiri is still donning the Na'vi funeral face paint when we meet her again after the events of *The Way of Water*. Jake's (Sam Worthington) way of grieving is to push it down, which then creates an overprotective father working to safeguard his family. That leaves Neytiri to face this moment alone, and it consumes her. She doesn't want to blame her husband for the loss of Neteyam, so she places a greater target on Spider.

She "becomes deeply racist, in a way," Cameron comments. "She says it: 'I hate their pink little hands.' She just hates them. She can't understand what appears to her to be insanity. And here's this kid that's best friends with her children, contaminating them with human values, turning them away from the traditional Na'vi way. And her own children are mixed race. They have some human genetics in them."

Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) in 'Avatar: Fire and Ash'.

Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

The hate the character felt was "heavy" and "intoxicating," Saldaña describes. "She's the kind of individual that doesn't think first, she feels first. So she ruled with her heart. And a lot of the pain and a lot of her anger, she was manifesting it through her body. That sort of physical manifestation of pain and anger was extremely rare for me to ever play, though it felt familiar in a very abstract way."

To pull it off, she needed to lean into the moment and trust all the training and preparation would serve as her safety net. But she put a great deal of trust into her fellow cast and crew, whom she describes in familial terms.

"In times of true exhaustion and depletion, I can convey that to Jim or Sam or Stephen [Lang, actor behind Quartich]," Saldaña adds. It's happened before. She remembers various moments when she had to walk away from scenes with Worthington and return to finish them later. "In order for you to do something like this," she continues, "you have to do it in a safe environment with people that you absolutely look up to, and you have to be honest."

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Decades ago, when a 28-year-old Zoe Saldaña walked onto the performance-capture stage of *Avatar* for the first time, she was hungry for this kind of role. Now 47, she sees her younger self as insatiable, curious, and anxious to leap into the unknown. Perhaps it's only now that she can really do this kind of performance justice.

"I had so much that I felt like I wanted to do and so much energy," she says. "And now, I still have the passion for what I do, but also I've acquired a passion for life, as well, that is quite beautiful, and that feeds my work. I know that, in order for it to feed my work, I have to have experiences in life so that it can inform me for things that I may do in the future."

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