Zoe Saldana: Caribbean Queen

Orlando Bloom and beautiful Zoe Saldana have "hooked up" before..in a sense. She was a feisty and cute female pirate sailing the Caribbean on The Black Pearl. Now the duo gets much more up close and personal as thwarted young lovers in the Cayman Islands dramaHaven. Zoe has more real-life Caribbean experience having spent her young years in the Dominican Republic. You might have seen graceful and verbal actress as the airport guard Tom Hanks tried to fix up in The Terminal or as the girl who made Nick Cannon's heart go boom in Drumline and Ashton Kutcher yell "Guess Who".

For our chat in Beverly Hills, Zoe wore a very cute Rebecca Taylor top; black lace and brown with yellow flowers over jeans. Her long, gold filigree earrings sparkled when she moved her head. We had been waiting a while for her. Hummm, what is keeping her? Zoe rushes in. Why was she late?

Zoe: Right now, at this point in my career, I just go where I'm told and sit where they tell me. We never know what's going on. We've been doing TV. Orlando may be grabbing a bite to eat because we were working and didn't get anything. They took my mac and cheese away. [we go "awwwww"]

TeenHollywood: Didn't you grow up in the Caribbean?

Zoe: Yeah, I'm from the Caribbean, so that's what I loved about this story was how accurate Frankie [Flowers, the writer/director] was in terms of the social structure of it and how there's no middle class: you're either rich or you're poor. And the ladder to success is not really a ladder, it's a chain. Once you reach a certain level, you can't go back and you can only keep going forward. And also, how accurate he was by showing where we really base our principles. It has nothing to do with the color of someone's skin. It has to do with money and their class. And I think it is very similar to Hollywood. It's a very interesting, symbolic sort of parody. It's beautiful on the outside. Everybody wants to be in it. Everybody wants to live in Cayman. I mean, I want to be a waitress. The average waitress makes $75-90,000 a year!

TeenHollywood: Wow! I'm in the wrong business!

Zoe: Yeah...and she doesn't have to report it. That's amazing. So everybody wants to be a superstar, but once you're living there, you realize you become very comfortable, very spoiled and you start abusing the resources that give you the privileges that you have.

TeenHollywood: Orlando was telling us about the differences in pace and lifestyles in the big cities versus the islands. What do you think?

Zoe: It's much more relaxed. If you're having a bad day at the office, just get my surf board. I'm going surfing. Literally, that's what life in the Caribbean is. You fail the test? Great, you're going to go body surfing and have a beer with your buddies.

TeenHollywood: Sounds good to us. When you read the script for Haven were you attracted to the Romeo/Juliet tragedy or just the story as a whole?

Zoe: There was certainly a tragedy there. It was a love story where they couldn't be together and it was heartbreaking. What I liked was, it had that tragedy but by watching the film, you realized it had to do with the Caribbean culture where there's no middle class. Like I said, it's the high and it's the poor and there's no in between. You've always got to be climbing up that ladder. Your children are the ones who pay the toll.

TeenHollywood: And some rich parents used their kids to marry into more riches.

Zoe: Yes. She [her character Andrea] was the golden token.

TeenHollywood: This movie also has a lot to say about parent and teen relationships. It's tough for the teen lovers when the parents just don't get their passion for each other and don't want to.

Zoe: Yes. You're trying to be with someone that nobody thinks you should be with. As parents, you are trying to find the means to give your child what you think is best for them but what you don't realize is you are harming them along the way. Bill Paxton's story with Agnes [Bruckner, who plays his teen daughter] is very compelling in that sense. [The movie] also sort of marries universal issues that everybody goes through from children to parents.

TeenHollywood: And what's the message?

Zoe: I think the message is that you can redeem yourself. It's my favorite scene where this reggae singer John Le Baptiste starts singing in the concert and it starts raining and everybody is just enjoying how this makes them feel. It's sort of washing all the dirt away. I think it's very symbolic and beautiful.

TeenHollywood: So much of the sorrow could have been averted if parents would just really sit down and listen to their kids.

Zoe: Exactly. The truth is that half of the mistakes your kids make are due to your ignorance, to the lack of you listening. Had [my character] Andrea's father sat down to try to understand... even [Orlando's character] Shy's mother is too busy thinking 'don't be messing with those rich people. You're from this side. Just stick to this'. Nobody wants to just sit down and go 'what does this mean to you?'

TeenHollywood: It's hard to survive the cultural and financial prejudices.

Zoe: We're all survivors. We survived puberty.

TeenHollywood: Right.. not fun. Speaking of fun, how was doing the love scene with Orlando? Millions of fans want to know.

Zoe: [She smiles] Look, it's always difficult but it's better if you see a familiar face, especially for a girl. You're wearing very few items of clothing and the room is predominantly filled with men and so many factors that are added into a love scene that it makes it harder for you as an actor to keep on your track and focus on what you're trying to do. It's good to have a familiar face; someone you can trust. Like whenever they would say 'cut' Orlando wouldn't just get up. He would wait until they brought me my robe and I find that to be meaningful for a woman.

TeenHollywood: He's a polite guy. We all like that. When Shy gets scarred in the film, how do you think that changes everything?

Zoe: They [the two lovers] sort of scar themselves. It didn't matter how intense or how gory it could have gotten because Shy was known on the island. There were references in the script and the story where he's just a charming man. Everybody loves him. Whether because the girls think he's very attractive or because he's very graceful. And the same people who put him up on that pedestal, when he loses his looks, those are the same people that isolate him because they don't know how to treat him. So he doesn't really know where to go. It also goes to show where we put our priorities -- that a person's heart lies in the features in his face, and if that's disfigured then nobody cares what's inside.

TeenHollywood: So regrettably true, especially in Hollywood.

At this point, Zoe has to leave. We hope they give her back her mac and cheese!!

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.