Zoe Saldana may not have been a name that you were familiar with in the past but 2009 has really seen her put herself on the acting map.

With two blockbusters under her belt in the last twelve months, not to mention one of them being the biggest grossing movie of all time, Saldana looks set for a very busy few years ahead of her.

As a youngster Saldana was a promising dancer before moving into theatre when she returned to America from the Dominican Republic.

She kicked off her acting career in 2000 with the Nicholas Hytner drama Centre Stage, which focused on the world of professional dance.

She followed this up with Get Over It and the Britney Spears movie Crossroads before getting the taste of the big budget blockbuster in 2003.

She took on the role of Anamaria in the Gore Verbinski directed movie Pirates of the Caribbean, which saw her appear alongside Johnny Depp.

A role in The Terminal followed before her career went quite, her next notable role coming in Guess Who in 2005 alongside Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac.

Once again things went a little quiet until she resurfaced as part of the ensemble cast of Vantage Point in 2008.

Working alongside Dennis Quaid, Sigourney Weaver, Matthew Fox and Forest Whitaker Vantage Point told an assassination attempt on the President of the United States from eight different points of view.

But it was 2009 where she saw her acting career really turn around and it was Star Trek that kicked it all off.

Following in the footsteps of James Bond filmmakers J.J. Abrams re-booted the Star Trek franchise with a whole new cast and telling the story right from the very beginning.

Saldana landed the role of Nyota Uhura alongside Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban. Directed by Abrams the film followed the maiden voyage of the Starship Enterprise.

The movie was a critical hit as well as going on to do well at the box office, grossing over $385 million globally.

There are already talks of a sequel and it looks like we may be seeing Saldana in the role of Uhura for some time.

But In December Saldana was part of the Avatar cast list, the movie that would change the way that we watch our movie.

Cameron built his own cameras to shoot in 3D as he worked on this project for almost twenty years.

It was a change of role for the actress as she took on the character of Neytiri, princess of the Omaticaya. Her character was created using performance capture and is created using computers.

To say that Avatar was a box office success would be a little bit of an understatement as it broke through the $1 billion barrier in just seventeen days.

The movie has since surpassed $2 billion and is now the biggest grossing movie of all time, there are talks of a sequel.

The actress has several projects in the pipeline this year including The Losers, adaptation of Andy Diggle’s graphic novel of the same name.

She will also join Matt Dillon, Paul Walker and Idris Elba for Takers before moving onto the Death At A Funeral, a remake of the British comedy.

From Female First