Zoe Saldana slams Hollywood's attitude towards pregnant stars

Zoe Saldana says Hollywood actresses are treated differently when they're pregnant.

Zoe Saldana believes she was almost written out of a movie role because she had a baby.

The actress has criticised Hollywood studios for how they treat actresses who have had babies, in an interview with USA Today.

Saldana, who has upcoming roles in the Avatar and Star Trek movie franchises, didn't specify which project she was talking about, but she did say how things changed for her after she had her twin boys, Cy and Bowie, in January.

"Let me tell you something, it will never be the right time for anybody in your life that you get pregnant," she told the news outlet.

She also said that it was last year when, "the productions I was slated to work on sort of had a panic. I heard through the grapevine there was even a conversation of me being written off of one of the projects."

Saldana said she couldn't believe what she had heard.

"I was like, 'Oh, my God, are you kidding me? It's this bad?' Right when I just feel super-duper happy, is that inconvenient for you? That me, as a woman in my thirties, I finally am in love and I am finally starting my life? And it's (screwing) your schedule up? Really?"

Saldana's team had to fight to make sure that Saldana had child care included in her contracts whereas, she said, studios happily spend money on maintaining a superstar lifestyle for their male actors by paying for private jets, bodyguards or booking them "a really phat penthouse or them staying in a yacht instead of them staying on land."

"But then a woman comes in going, 'Okay, I have a child. You're taking me away from my home. You're taking my children away from their home. And you're going to make me work a lot more hours than I usually would if I was home. Therefore, I would have to pay for this nanny for more hours so I kind of need that. And they go, 'Nope, we don't pay for nannies'," she said.

Saldana said she still loves her job and balancing her job with her family life is a challenge.

"That's the most exhausting thing, the balance of it all. But it helps when you're doing it with your companion. If I know Marco (her husband) is trying to balance it as well, then I feel like I'm not alone," she said.

- AAP