Zoe Saldana defends Britney Spears

For reasons we can't quite begin to understand, Zoe Saldana's promotional work for Guardians Of The Galaxy seems to involve talking about Britney Spears a lot.

Saldana appeared with Spears in Crossroads, a movie so bad many assumed Britney's character was supposed to be the young Amy Turtle. And Saldana has nothing but praise for Brit:

"She was the one big, big celebrity that I met when I was starting to work in Hollywood, who literally was humble. I do believe that people and children gravitate to good energy, and she`s definitely an abundance of that," said the 36-year-old.

It's not just children who gravitate to good energy. It's people as well.

Humble, of course, has many meanings, so it's possible that Saldana is actually claiming that Britney was literally low in rank, or literally small in size. Or, equally, that Saldana meant "genuinely" rather than "literally".

It's worth noting that she doesn't bother attempting to defend Spears' acting in the movie.

Oddly, Saldana is then dragged into giving an opinion on the current round of 'can Britney sing without Autotune' chatter - because, naturally, the best person to ask is somebody who did some acting with Spears over a decade ago.

"I`m pretty sure that 80 percent of our musical artists would be mortified if they were caught singing without auto-tune."

"She was the only pop star at that time - and I can name a lot of prominent figures right now that today are more famous than Britney - that literally got to where they were at by hating on Britney a lot."

"Because it was cool at one time to really just diss her. And Britney never did that,"

I think calling this a half-formed thought would be to over praise it - presumably Saldana means that Spears didn't get where she is today by attacking other singers, but that seems to be an odd defence to accusations of 'not being able to sing' even if properly expressed. What Saldana ends up saying is that Britney isn't that famous any more, but at least she never dissed herself.

But to be fair, the whole answer has a subtext of 'why are you asking me this anyway?'

Here's Zoe in her current role:

She's on the left, playing the woman out that Chinese Girl painting everyone had on their walls in the 1970s, alongside (l-r) Wilf 'Gasmask' Grimshaw (gas mask not pictured); Pepe Le Pew; Dom Littlewood and The Singing Ringing Tree.