Zoë Saldana on What Hit Home in Her 'Very Brave' International Love Story 'From Scratch'

Warning: This story contains spoiler's from Netflix's From Scratch.

Zoë Saldana's latest role deeply resonated with her.

Having married an Italian man herself, the 44-year-old actress tells PEOPLE she connected with her character in Netflix's From Scratch, based on Tembi Locke's memoir detailing her experience as a Black American woman who married into a less-than-accepting Sicilian family.

"The fact that I would laugh out loud to all the things that she, as a woman that is not Italian, marrying a very Italian man, went through; it's an ongoing thing for me. It's a saga that never ends, that I love. I've learned to embrace a lot of it," Saldana explains.

"And a lot of it is just perfect and beautiful and blissful and exactly what I wanted," continues the Avatar star, who wed Italian artist Marco Perego in 2013, with whom she shares 5-year-old Zen and 7-year-old twins Bowie Ezio and Cy Aridio. "But it's not for the faint of heart when you marry somebody who comes with a big baggage of 4,000 years of history and art and philosophy. And great cuisine. It's a lot to handle in just one simple day."

Saldana stars in From Scratch as Amahle "Amy" Wheeler, an American student studying abroad in Italy, where she falls in love with a Sicilian chef named Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea). Although their romance faces scrutiny by his traditional family, they all come together when Lino is diagnosed with a devastating illness.

Based on Locke's 2019 memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home, the book recounts the actress's love story with her late husband Saro, with whom she shared daughter Zoela before his death, when she ultimately reconnected with his family in Sicily.

"The way that she admired Saro and understood him and had so much compassion for him, because Saro had left everything to be with her and had to start from scratch, they were always starting from scratch," Saldana says.

"But as long as they were together, they were going be triumphant. And even in the way that their story transpired ... they were at the helm of their journey," she adds. "And that, to me, was very brave. And that, to me, was very endearing and strong."

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Saldana notes that she not only understood with Tembi's journey — but also Zoela's, as she's a daughter of Dominican immigrants. "Getting to live that duality all in one day felt very familiar to me," she says.

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From Scratch is streaming now on Netflix.