Siena Blog

Photo Credit: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images

Avg. read time: 4 min.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2025

The theme of National Hispanic Heritage Month 2025 is Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future.

Observed annually from September 15th to October 15th, National Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the history and culture of the U.S. Latino and Hispanic communities. During this important month celebrating Hispanic history and culture, Siena is highlighting film and television star Zoe Saldaña for her inspiring artistic and cultural contributions as an Afro-Latino actress with dyslexia.

Zoe Saldaña’s Dyslexia

“When you have a child that has ADHD and is dyslexic and has a lot of energy and doesn’t sit still and is unable to listen, you think that it’s on purpose. I just remember asking myself, ‘Why don’t I fit in? Why do I do this?’ It would make me really sad, and it would make me feel really isolated.” —Zoe Saldaña in Harper's Bazaar

Born in northern New Jersey, Saldaña began her film and TV acting career in the late 1990s. Saldaña identifies as Afro-Latino of Puerto Rican and Dominican heritage, with Spanish as her home language. She also has Lebanese and Haitian family roots.

She is especially well known for her roles as Neytiri in the Avatar franchise, Lieutenant Uhura in the recent Star Trek films, and Gamora in the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and other MCU films. She’s also voiced characters in the animated films Elio and Vivo.

Saldaña has dyslexia and ADHD, which were diagnosed early in her life and led to problems in learning and remembering information. She has only recently been more public about how her learning differences and neurodiversity have affected her acting career. Saldaña has shared that she used to avoid more prominent roles that would’ve challenged her learning differences and anxiety.

Saldaña initially saw her role on the Paramount TV series Lioness as a welcome challenge, since writer Taylor Sheridan is known for dialogue-heavy scripts for such shows as Yellowstone and Mayor of Kingstown. As she reflected, “It’s very wordy. There’s a cadence to the way he wants the sort of dialogue in the scenes to be said.”

Like many in the LD community do regularly, Saldaña has adapted her learning style to her roles, such as getting her scripts well in advance or hiring a line reader to help her practice and memorize her dialogue. She told Variety Magazine in this article, “The worst thing that [Lioness writer Taylor Sheridan] can do is to change a scene last minute or add dialogue. That’s when I’m like, ‘Wait, wait, wait, that’s dyslexia 2.0’ — that will be the next step.”

Her role in the 2024 dramatic musical Emilia Pérez led to, among other accolades, both an Oscar and a Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actress. She opened her Golden Globes acceptance speech by saying, “I know I don’t have much time. I have dyslexia, so I tend to forget when I’m really anxious.” (Watch the full speech here.)

She’s also drawn on her background as a dancer in performing her more physical roles, learning her lines, and adapting to changes. As Saldaña also shared in this Variety Magazine article, “by the time that scene [in Lioness] would come, it was an extension of who I was — like ballet. [...] The moment my brain realized that words are like a plié in a pas de deux, I was just like, ‘Ooh, a grand jeté is like a Taylor Sheridan monologue.’”

You can also watch this video on the Child Mind Institute website where Saldaña talks more about her dyslexia journey, sharing:

“Something that my older self would tell my younger self is [to] rely on those people that really believe in you and are really willing to genuinely listen to you. It does get better, but please speak up. Don’t live in silence, because who you are and what you do and what you’re going through is not wrong.”

National Hispanic Heritage Month Resources 

Below are some additional resources to help commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month this year:

• View Hispanic Heritage Month Resources from the National Museum of the American Latino
• Look at These Books To Read for Latine & Hispanic Heritage Month from Penguin Random House
• Learn about the 25 Most Anticipated Books of 2025 from Latinx in Publishing

Siena Resources 

Previous Heritage Month spotlights of notable people with dyslexia feature writer and activist Victor Villaseñor, artist Ignacio Gomez, and pro athletes Jewell Loyd and A’ja Wilson. Click here to see all of Siena’s Heritage Month Spotlights from previous years.

The Siena School, a national leader in dyslexia education, serves bright, college-bound students with language-based learning differences on DC Metro area campuses in Silver Spring, MD (grades 3-4 and 5-12) and Oakton, VA (grades 3-12).