15 Years Ago, Zoe Saldana’s Action Movie Debut Flopped, But Also Set Her Up Perfectly for TV’s Hottest Show Today

It has been 15 years since Zoe Saldana made her solo action movie debut, but that release flopped, and it looked like that career direction was not meant to be. However, while she didn’t find success in that first movie attempt in the genre, she has proven over time that the action genre is a perfect fit for her, in both movies and TV shows. It is almost impossible to look at the actress’s career and not immediately think of her dominating the screen as Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Guardians of the Galaxy. However, she has another role that is a spiritual successor to her previous action movie flop in the Taylor Sheridan TV series Lioness.

Zoe Saldana took on her action movie debut role in the thriller Colombiana in 2011, and while that movie was a flop, it is easy to see how it played into her most recent successful TV role in the series Lioness.

Colombiana Proved Zoe Saldana Would Be Perfect for Lioness Role

It seemed like Colombiana was a perfect start for Zoe Saldana’s action movie career. The movie was based on a script co-written by the great Luc Besson (Leon the Professional) and was directed by Olivier Megaton, a director who had previously worked on Transporter 3. Saldana previously worked on young adult movies like Get Over It and Crossroads, and she had her biggest film in 2003 with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. After taking on the major role of Uhura in the Star Trek reboot and a role in the comic book adaptation The Losers in 2010, she was ready for a solo breakout.

That movie was Colombiana, but its box-office disappointment and lackluster critical reviews made it seem like Saldana’s solo action career was dead in the water. In the movie, Saldana played Cataleya, a woman whose parents were killed by a drug lord when she was nine and who grew up to become a highly trained warrior seeking revenge. The movie made $63.5 million on a $40 million budget, which was low for the genre. Its Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 29%.

While this seemed to kill Saldana’s action movie career, at least in solo movies, it didn’t slow her down. She starred in two more Star Trek movies, joined the MCU as Gamora, and continued her role in James Cameron’s Avatar as Neytiri. Saldana became a star, even without the solo movie success.

That said, the trail that started with Colombiana leads in a straight line to her recent TV series Lioness. In this series from Taylor Sheridan and produced by Saldana, she plays Joe McNamara, a CIA senior case officer who runs the Lioness program, which sends in female operatives to go undercover in the war on terror. When you see Saldana as a young woman seeking to bring down a drug lord, it is interesting to see her leading a unit that sends in other young women with the same goals in mind. While Colombiana was a disappointment, Zoe Saldana has made the best of it and remains one of the best actresses working today.