Zoe Saldana comes out of the closet at Women in Film’s Crystal + Lucy Awards

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At Women in Film’s 2010 Crystal + Lucy Awards Tuesday night, Zoe Saldana finally announced that she was coming out of the closet.

As a straight woman, that is.

Accepting the MaxMara “Face of the Future” Award, the 31-year-old “Avatar” and “Star Trek” star said, “I have to thank that one special person who always gets buried and overlooked. I’ve lived a very private life, and I’ve been with a partner for 10 years who has allowed me to age ...”

(Insert your own gasp here.)

“... which is absolutely awesome and he’s super bright, and he’s here tonight and I’m just going to come out of the closet right now. I’m going to say, ‘Thank you.’ I tend to confuse privacy with not saying thank you, so I love you.”

And then the screens on either side of the stage flashed on her squeeze, former actor and chief executive of MyFDB.com Keith Britton

Now the Ministry is just as romantic as the next blogger, but we suspect that the lovely Saldana didn’t just wake up and discover she was living with a cutie pie. We’re placing our bets on the long arm of Siempre Mujer magazine, for Latinas living in the U.S., which put her on the cover of its April/May issue. English translations of the cover story, which ricocheted as far away as the Hindustan Times, had Saldana saying she wasn’t surprised by rumors she was a lesbian: “People have sometimes told my grandmother, ‘Your granddaughter has a bit of lesbianism in her.’”

Oops.

A few days after the issue came out, Saldana was smooching her boyfriend on the “Death at a Funeral” premiere red carpet.

Back at the packed Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel gala, women rocked, specifically self-professed “control freak” Courteney Cox, who nabbed the Lucy Award; Lisa Cholodenko, director of “The Kids Are All Right,” who picked up the Dorothy Arzner Directors Award; Universal Pictures Co-chair Donna Langley, who took home the Crystal Award; legend Eva Marie Saint, who was honored with the Legacy Series Award; and cinematographer Cynthia Pusheck, who received the Kodak Vision Award.

The evening’s theme was “A New Era,” and as Sally Field explained, presenting the award to Pusheck, a lot of things have changed since the actress’ professional debut as TV’s “Gidget” in 1964. “I was 17 years old and ... I was so much younger than anyone else there. I was this little kid who said, ‘Which one’s the camera?’”

Oh no, you didn’t.

“Yes, I really said that. The next thing I noticed was that I was the only female” apart from the makeup artist and script supervisor. “Now almost 50 years later, I walked onstage at Disney, where for the last four years we’ve been filming ‘Brothers & Sisters,’ and a few things have changed. First of all, I’m no longer the youngest person on the set. And I’m no longer the only female. Quite the contrary. A whole hunk of the crew ... are women.”

Also celebrating women in film were host Debra Messing; presenters Emily Blunt, Rachel Griffiths, Vanessa Hudgens and Laura Dern; singer Colbie Caillat, who performed; WIF Foundation Chairwoman Sharon Lawrence; and guests Jennifer Aniston (Cox’s BFF who won last year’s Crystal Award), Judd Apatow, Nikki Reed, Elisabeth Reaser, Busy Philipps, Kate Flannery and Maggie Grace. Click on the photo gallery to see the scene on the red carpet.

-- Irene Lacher

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