Zoe Saldaña, who is currently enjoying a high-profile awards season for her performance in Emilia Pérez, will be honoured with the Derek Malcolm Award for Innovation at the 45th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards in February, 2025.
The actress is the second recipient of the award created in the memory of film critic Derek Malcolm, who died aged 91 in August 2023, after actor and filmmaker Colman Domingo who was feted at the 44th London Critics’ Circle Awards.
“I’m honoured and thrilled to receive the Derek Malcolm Award for Innovation from the London Film Critics’ Circle, a group I greatly admire and respect,” said Saldaña.
“This has been a wonderful year for film with so many striking and indelible roles for women. To have had the opportunity to work in this industry for twenty-five years has been a privilege and to perform the role of Rita in Emilia Pérez has been the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Actor and producer Saldaña is also nominated for Supporting Actress of the Year in the upcoming London Critics’ Circle Awards, the ceremony for which will take place at London’s May Fair Hotel on February 2, 2025.
Saldaña’s wide-ranging career includes starring roles in four of the highest-grossing films of all time including Avatar and Avengers: Endgame, and she has also made her mark in numerous sci-fi franchises, from Star Trek to Guardians of the Galaxy.
Her work in James Cameron’s Avatar series, performed via motion-capture, embraced ground-breaking technical advances in filmmaking and earned both critical and awards recognition. Saldaña’s 25-year career also spans 2000 breakout Centre Stage, Out of the Furnace, Colombiana and the mini-series Rosemary’s Baby.
As a producer, Saldaña has helped bring diverse narratives and authentic women’s stories to the screen, including her acclaimed TV series Special Ops: Lioness, in which she also stars, and The Absence of Eden, which shed a light on trafficking across the US-Mexico border.
Earlier this year, Saldaña won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Emilia Pérez alongside her costars Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz.
“Critics have long been fans of Zoe Saldaña’s ground-breaking work,” says Rich Cline, chair of London Film Critics’ Circle, “from her astonishingly nuanced turns in genre pieces like Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy to her pioneering role producing complex female narratives. And in Emilia Pérez she wowed us with a beautifully compelling, full-bodied performance from the heart.”
Derek Malcolm was a long-standing member of the Critics’ Circle and served a term as its president. As chief critic for The Guardian and The Evening Standard, he was a seminal figure in the UK film industry and was widely respected as a champion of world cinema.
In addition to hosting The Film Club on the BBC and publishing several books, he was honorary president of Fipresci, a former director of London Film Festival and governor of the British Film Institute
Frontrunners in the recently announced nominations for the 45th London Critics’ Circle Film Awards are Sean Baker’s Anora and Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which are nominated in seven categories each.
The awards are voted on by the 208-member Film Section of the Critics’ Circle, the U.K.’s longest-standing critics’ organisation.
