Saldana was born Zoe Yadira Saldana Nazario in Passaic, New Jersey.Her father, Aridio Saldana was from the Dominican Republic, while her mother, Asalia Nazario is from Puerto Rico.She has often spoken of her pride in being from a Latin culture.Her first languages are English and Spanish. She spent the majority of her early childhood growing up in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. She has two sisters, named Cisely and Mariel, and a half-brother named Nipo, known as Nipo 809, who is a Dominican artist and producer.Her father died in a car accident when she was nine years old,and Saldana and her mother subsequently moved to the Dominican Republic. There, Saldana discovered her love of dance and soon enrolled in the ECOS Espacio de Danza Academy; she studied various forms of dance but describes ballet as her first passion.She told Vanity Fair that she quit ballet because she did not have the feet and had too much pride and ambition to just be in the corps de ballet The family returned to New York City after her sophomore year in high school.In 1995, she began performing with the FACES theater group in Brooklyn,which put on plays geared toward providing positive messages for teens via themes dealing with issues such as substance abuse and adolescent sexuality.