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Actor Zoe Saldaña may have wanted her character Gamora to be pretty in Guardians of the Galaxy. But she also wanted Gamora to live up to her reputation as an intergalactic warrior. To do this, she needed her stunts to look realistic and believable. She believed action hero Jet Li was a perfect reference for Gamora’s action scenes.
Zoe Saldaña found doing stunt work as Gamora very important in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’
Saldaña was already known for starring in sci-fi projects before being cast as Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy. So much so that, at one point, she was afraid of being typecast. But perhaps Gamora was one of her most physical roles, which required Saldaña to pay a little more attention to her stunt work. In a resurfaced interview with Collider, she gave some insight into her thought process when doing action scenes. She felt an adequate stunt team was one of the most important factors in doing her fight choreography justice.
“For me, it’s very important if I do action movies and I have a stunt person, to work with them. Not only by memorizing the choreography but also it’s important to study that individual and it’s imperative for that individual to study you because you’re not playing two different people, you’re playing the same person. Also, in order for the actor’s wishes to be respected in terms of characteristics that your character’s gonna have, you have to work with good and intelligent and talented stunt people that not only can carry weapons well but can also carry a personality,” she said.
“For Gamora, I guess it’s so easy to just not invest in the action part of it and sort of not aide the stunt team to going, ‘You know, that’s great. She can jump, she can land, she can definitely fight with the sword,’” Saldaña added.
For her own stunts, Saldaña drew inspiration from action legend Jet Li.
“But instead of looking like Jackie Chan, why don’t we give her an air of Jet Li because it’s this form of wushu, which is his form of training. Jet Li is much more graceful than karate, which is what Jackie Chan has trained in. And I find that with women, you have to maintain some kind of grace, at least that’s my personal opinion,” she said.
Zoe Saldaña once named the 1 ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ stunt that made her think she was dying
Although Saldaña wanted to channel Jet Li while playing Gamora, she didn’t do all of her stunts in Guardians of the Galaxy’s three movies. Additionally, one of her most frightening stunts was one she wasn’t likely to forget. In an interview with As the Bunny Hops, Saldaña recalled how she jumped into action scene a bit too quickly.
“There is a jump that I did. They made me jump from three stories or something. Is it a 30 foot jump? Yeah. And I was on wires, but-I don’t know-I still can’t remember if somebody told me, and I just brain farted, or somebody forgot to tell me that I was going to free fall. I was not going to feel the tension on the wires,” she said.
The harrowing sequence made the Avatar star think that her life was in danger for the moment. And unfortunately for the actor, she had to do the take all over again.
“So when they said action, and I jumped-Because obviously I don’t like to take my time, because there’s so many men watching you…I jumped. I jumped and thought I was dying. I forgot to speak English. And then James Gunn was like, “Yeah, your face was kind of awful there. You have to do it again,” she said.
