Zoe Saldana loves her family, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get exhausted and she’s the first to admit that there are complaints to be made about motherhood.
The Dominican-Puerto Rican actress shares twins Cy and Bowie, four, and Zen, two, with her husband Marco Perego, and has admitted that she loves nothing more than complaining about how “exhausted” she is, because it means that the men in her life have to be nice to her.
Zoe Saldana with her husband, Marco Perego and their children, Bowie, Cy and Ezio attend the ceremony honouring Zoe with a star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018. Image: Getty.
Speaking with Us Weekly magazine, the Guardians of the Galaxy star said: “I love complaining about the fact that I’m exhausted and I’m tired. Sometimes [my sons] are mean, and the moment you kinda go, ‘Be nice to Mumma’ and… ‘I can’t repeat this anymore,’ they turn back and they just do it.
“You repurpose, and you’re kind of inspired and you go, ‘I’m so happy I have little boys’.”
40-year-old Saldana also confessed that it was motherhood that taught her how to “be nice”, crediting her boys with reminding her that she’d “forgotten” how to sit down and play with them because she had become so caught up in raising them.
She said: “As mummies sometimes we forget that. We’re caught raising and teaching and disciplining and cooking and cleaning and not enough time to play. I think that my kids always remind me when I’m being too boring. They go, ‘Mama, be nice, sit down and play with me’. That’s what they’re teaching me.”
Speaking to InStyle in 2015 the actress said she “lowered her guard” when she met her husband, Italian artist – and former professional soccer player Marco.
“Finally when we had our boys, I looked at my husband and I realised: I was meant for you and you were meant for me. I’ve always felt comfortable around men as long as they were friends. Now I finally feel comfortable with my lover. I don’t want to be separate. I want my church. I want to live inside the religion of our own little family.”
WATCH: Zoe Saldana explains why she won’t share pictures of her children online. Continues after video …
Saldana has previously revealed that her husband took her last name.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” Saldana told InStyle.
“I told him, ‘If you use my name, you’re going to be emasculated by your community of artists, by your Latin community of men, by the world.’ But Marco looks up at me and says, ‘Ah, Zoe, I don’t give a s–t’.”
And breaking down gender stereotypes is something the pair is keen to do with their sons as well.
Saldana admitted last year that she and Marco are raising their little ones in a gender neutral environment, saying at the time: “My husband participates in a lot of tasks that were normally given to woman and vice versa. I get to do a lot of male things, which is, I don’t know, put the TV together, fix things that break.”
