Actor Zoe Saldana had to make out with Sam Worthington when the pair collaborated in Avatar. But the conditions the two actors were put under for the make-out scene made for a very awkward experience.
Why Zoe Saldana felt ridiculous kissing Sam Worthington in ‘Avatar’
Saldana has had to kiss many co-stars in her long career. But kissing Worthington in 2009’s Avatar might have proven to be one of the actor’s strangest experiences. Saldana and Worthington both played members of James Cameron’s fictional alien race The Na’vi.
Both Saldana and Worthington had to wear special equipment in order to bring their characters, and their intimacy, to the big screen. But this equipment often got in the way of her and Worthington’s fictional love-making.
“We were doing performance capture for the computers, so Sam and I had on these helmets with a boom and a camera at the end of it and we would get tangled up before our lips could touch,” Saldana once told Parade. “Jim would yell, ‘Cut. The actors are stuck again. Can’t you guys be more careful?’ We were like, ‘Damn it. It’s not that easy.’”
Saldana and Worthington both found the humor in the take, however uncomfortable it might have been.
“It was a riot and it was silly. Sometimes we’d just start laughing. The entire time we were all blushing. It was just like, ‘Okay, this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done,’” she said.
Zoe Saldana couldn’t understand anything Sam Worthington said when they first met.
Saldana and Worthington didn’t have the smoothest time together when they initially met for a meeting. When Saldana was tapped to play Worthington’s co-lead and love interest, Worthington wanted to meet the Star Trek star. He thought doing so might help his chances of snagging his Avatar role.
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“I said to [director James Cameron], ‘Can I meet the person that you want to play Neytiri? Because I’d like to audition with them. I think that will help me get the part.’ So I met Zoe, wooed her, charmed her and then found out a bit later that she had no idea what I was saying,” Worthington said in a 2022 interview with People. “She couldn’t understand my accent.”
Saldana would confirm Worthington’s claims.
“Listen to him: ‘I talked to her, wooed her.’ I’m the one who’s the Chatty Cathy. But it’s true— he would talk, and I had no idea what he was saying,” Saldana said. “The Australian accent was unfamiliar to me. And he spoke really fast.”
The actor who Zoe Saldana thought was ‘gross’ to kiss
Worthington wasn’t the only awkward kiss Saldana might have had in her career. Saldana reportedly didn’t have a good time kissing Orlando Bloom, either. She co-starred alongside Bloom in the 2004 feature film Haven. Both stars were also a part of Johnny Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
In a 2006 interview with People, Bloom was told that Saldana called kissing him “gross.” But Bloom asserted that the feeling was mutual.
“I hated kissing Zoe too! I was like, ‘Take your tongue out of my mouth, please. Your boyfriend is standing right there.’ Most people think kissing beautiful costars must be great. But it’s always awkward, man,” Bloom said.
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