Zoe Saldaña wants audiences to truly understand the skill and talent that go into motion capture performances, like in James Cameron‘s Avatar movies.
The Oscar-winning actress shared during a recent interview with Alicia Keys for Beyond Noise that the filmmaker “is considering a documentary about the making of Avatar — finally giving us a chance to explain, in a meticulous way, why performance capture is the most empowering form of acting.”
The actress, who plays Neytiri in the 2009 pic and 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, expressed the importance of giving context to the type of work as “it gives us the credit, the ability to own 100 percent of our performance on screen.”
“With animation, you might go into the studio for [a few] sessions; that’s as much as they’ll need you for the whole movie. You go into a studio, however you’re dressed, and you lend your voice, right?” Saldaña continued. “Performance capture means that Avatar wouldn’t exist if Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, myself, and the entire cast didn’t get up and put those dots on our faces.”
“We put on that little unitard with all those dots on it, and step into a volume — that’s what we call the set — that’s rigged on the ceiling, with all these cameras in measured positions,” she added. “They’re all pointing into this space that finds us, and feeds that information into the system that is Pandora.”
Saldaña has been a longtime champion of motion capture acting, and previously called out the Academy Awards for not recognizing those performances. While the Oscars honor visual effects in films, both CGI and practical, the actors behind CGI characters are typically overlooked from the acting categories.
“It takes an average of seven years between [each Avatar film],” she said to Beyond Noise. “From the archery, the martial arts, the free diving, the scuba diving — so that you can hold your breath underwater for longer than five minutes — to the language [Cameron] conceived out of thin air, to physically training with former gymnasts, circus performers, and acrobats so you can learn how to walk like an extraterrestrial human species… That’s all us, and a group of incredible stunt actors that make our characters feel bionic. God bless them. With the technology that Jim creates, he gives the artist the power of complete ownership. It’s beautiful.”
Cameron’s Avatar won three Oscars, including best cinematography, best visual effects and best art direction.
Saldaña also reprises her role of Neytiri in Avatar: Fire and Ash, which hits theaters on Dec. 19, 2025.
