Zoe Saldaña had an awful experience working in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. But everything changed, she said, when she did a film with Steven Spielberg.

Speaking at the BFI London Film Festival, the Avatar star said the Oscar winner had "restored her faith" in Hollywood.

“I knew with that experience the kind of people that I wanted to work with,” the Marvel actor said of Pirates.

“The crew and the cast, they’re 99% of the time super marvelous. But if the studio and the producers and the director, they’re not leading with kindness and awareness and consideration." 

She continued, "Then that big of a production can become a really bad experience, and you may tip overboard. And I kind of did.”

The next film Zoe appeared in was the 2004's The Terminal. “I worked with Steven Spielberg eight months later, and he restored my faith that big can also be great,” she noted,

The Colombiana star remembered she felt “so good and so safe” on set and recalled how Spielberg would play music over the loudspeakers in between scenes to make sure everyone was “synchronized and on the same page.” 

"That’s how she discovered the work of Nino Rota, an Italian composer best known for scoring many of cinema great Federico Fellini’s films."

"As she and Spielberg discussed Rota’s work and its importance to filmmaking, the director told her something she’s never forgotten: “In order for you to know where you are, you have to know where you came from," Zoe concluded.