Zoe Saldaña Recalls How Her Dad’s Death Impacted Her as a Child

Zoe Saldaña is looking back at a difficult time in her life.

The Guardians of the Galaxy star opened up about how the 1987 passing of her dad, Aridio Saldaña, affected her as a child. In an exclusive sneak peek of her cover story for emmy magazine, out on newsstands Aug. 16, the 44-year-old recalled how her grandmother broke the devastating news that the patriarch had been killed in a car accident.

“I remember her drinking coffee and saying, ‘We’re going to get through this,'” she said. “‘Papa wants us to get through this. But please understand this part of life: death came knocking and took one of us.'”

After Aridio’s passing, Zoe and her family moved from New York to the Dominican Republic, where everything was “always new and changing, changing, changing.”

“There’s no winter, no Santa Claus, no grapes or apples—it’s mango and guavas,” she explained. “These sound like small things, but they add up in a day. It was hard.”