Zoe Saldaña Is Officially the Highest-Grossing Actor of All Time After Avatar: Fire and Ash

Nearly one month after Avatar: Fire and Ash‘s release, Zoe Saldaña is now the highest-grossing actor of all time at the global box office.

Saldaña, 47, has taken over as the world’s highest-grossing actor with a combined estimated box office gross of more than $15.4 billion, according to the box office website The Numbers‘ most updated list.

As Variety also noted on Tuesday, Jan. 13, she has starred in the three highest-grossing movies ever: 2009’s Avatar, its 2022 sequel The Way of Water and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. Fire and Ash, which hit theaters on Dec. 19, is currently the 29th highest-grossing movie of all time, according to Box Office Mojo; it crossed the $1 billion mark at the global box office on Jan. 3.

According to that outlet, Saldaña is also the first actress to appear in four movies that have made more than $2 billion globally; that list adds 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War to the three prior movies.

Saldaña leapfrogged her Avengers costar Scarlett Johansson to take the top spot on the list. Johansson, 41, previously claimed the title as the world’s highest-grossing movie actor from Samuel L. Jackson — another Marvel Cinematic Universe costar — in July after her 2025 movie Jurassic World Rebirth saw significant success at the box office.

Jackson, 77, now stands out at third on The Numbers’ list of the highest-grossing stars, with Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Pratt rounding out the top five.

Saldaña’s newfound place atop that list comes less than a year after she also won Best Supporting Actress at the 2025 Oscars for her role in 2024’s Emilia Pérez. She received significant critical and industry-wide acclaim for her performance in that movie and also won awards at last year’s Golden Globe Awards, Critics Choice Awards, BAFTA Awards and SAG Awards. Aside from her Oscar win and her return to Pandora as the Na’vi character Neytiri in Fire and Ash, Saldaña also voiced a character in Pixar’s 2025 movie Elio. 

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Saldaña is expected to continue to reprise her role in the Avatar franchise as Neytiri in the in-the-works fourth and fifth entries in the franchise, which are currently planned for release in 2029 and 2031, respectively. (As of December 2023, franchise creator and director Cameron told PEOPLE in an interview that the production had already filmed “part of movie four” before breaking for a time jump that he said will take place during that movie.)

In December, Deadline reported that Saldaña and Matthew McConaughey were in negotiations to star in an upcoming Netflix movie titled Positano, which the outlet described as “a romantic caper set in the Italian town the film is named after.”

Avatar: Fire and Ash is in theaters now.