Ana de Armas

• 1. Introduction

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  Ana de Armas grew up in Cuba on a tight screen budget. In her own words, it was "20 minutes of cartoons on Saturday and the Sunday movie matinee."

  In 2022 she played Marilyn Monroe in the film Blonde. The performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and she became the first Cuban ever nominated in that category.

  That distance, from a childhood of rationed screen time to the Academy Award ballot, raises a handful of questions. How does a girl without a VCR at home end up on international film sets? What did she have to leave behind to get there? And why did her career surge, stall and surge again, with a famous breakthrough that did not immediately pay off?

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• 2. Havana And Santa Cruz

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  Ana Celia de Armas Caso was born in Havana on the 30th of April 1988 and raised in Santa Cruz del Norte. Her mother's parents had emigrated to Cuba from northern Spain, from places including Valverde de la Sierra, León, and Guardo in Palencia.

  Her father, Ramón de Armas, held many jobs. He worked as a bank manager, a teacher, a school principal and the deputy mayor of a town, and he had once studied philosophy at a Soviet university. Her mother, Ana Caso, worked in the human resources section of the Ministry of Education. An older brother, Francisco Javier de Armas Caso, became a photographer based in the United States. In 2020 Cuban police questioned him over his criticism of Decree 349 and his links to artists under government surveillance.

  Food rationing, fuel shortages and electricity blackouts defined Cuba's Special Period, the backdrop to her childhood. De Armas nonetheless describes those years as happy.

  Without a VCR at home, she watched Hollywood films in a neighbor's apartment. In front of a mirror she memorized monologues and performed them to herself. At the age of 12, she decided she would become an actress.

  In 2002, at 14, she auditioned successfully for Havana's National Theatre of Cuba. She sometimes hitchhiked to reach the course, which she described as "rigorous." Even as a student she filmed three movies, and the first of them began with an interruption.

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• 3. A Star In Spain

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  Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's romantic drama Una rosa de Francia (2006) gave de Armas her first starring role, opposite Álex González. The Cuban actor Jorge Perugorría suggested her to the director after meeting her at a birthday party he attended with his daughters. The director visited her drama school and cut off the sixteen-year-old in the middle of her audition to tell her the part was hers.

  A promotional tour for the film took her to Spain, where she met Juan Lanja, who later became her Spanish agent. She went on to star in El edén perdido (2007). She also took a supporting role in Fernando Pérez's Madrigal (2007), which was filmed at night without the permission of her drama school tutors.

  A rule requiring three years of community service from Cuban graduates ended her studies early. Graduates may not leave the country until they complete it, so she left the four-year course shortly before presenting her final thesis. At 18, holding Spanish citizenship through her grandparents, she moved to Madrid.

  Within two weeks of arriving, she met the casting director Luis San Narciso, who had seen her in Una rosa de Francia. Two months later he cast her as Carolina in El Internado, a drama set in a boarding school. She starred for six seasons, from 2007 to 2010, and the show made her a celebrity in Spain.

  During a break from filming she starred in the successful coming-of-age comedy Mentiras y Gordas (2009). Yet the fame came with a frustration. Producers mostly offered her roles as youngsters, and she felt typecast. She asked to be written out in the show's second to last season, and then spent a few months in New York City learning English.

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• 4. Starting From Scratch

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  Persuaded to come back to Spain, de Armas starred in seventeen episodes of the historical drama Hispania (2010-2011). Horror followed in Antonio Trashorras's El callejón (2011) and Anabel (2015), along with the drama Por un puñado de besos (2014). Then work dried up. During that long gap she joined workshops at Tomaz Pandur's theatre company in Madrid and felt "very anxious" about her stalled momentum.

  In 2014, encouraged by a newly hired Hollywood agent, she moved to Los Angeles. She had to begin again "from scratch." She spoke very little English, and in early auditions she often "didn't even know what she was saying." She spent four months in full-time education to learn the language, because she did not want to be confined to characters written specifically for Latina actresses.

  Knock Knock (2015), an erotic thriller directed by Eli Roth, was her first Hollywood release. She starred opposite Keanu Reeves and learned her lines phonetically. Randy Cordova of the Arizona Republic gave the film a positive review but found her "unconvincing" in the part.

  Reeves then phoned to invite her into Daughter of God, a thriller in which he acted and which he produced. Her role was Spanish-language. Producer Mark Downie hoped it would become a star vehicle for her, but executive meddling led to heavy editing and a much smaller part. The film was eventually released as Exposed in 2016. Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter called her "appealing."

  War Dogs (2016), directed by Todd Phillips, cast her as the wife of an arms dealer opposite Miles Teller, and again she learned her lines phonetically. David Ehrlich of IndieWire thought her "memorable in a thankless role."

  Hands of Stone (2016) was the first Hollywood film she actually shot, even though its release was delayed. She played the wife of the Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán, opposite Édgar Ramírez. Director Jonathan Jakubowicz had watched her in El Internado and contacted her while she still lived in Madrid, inviting her to audition in Los Angeles. Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com called her "a hugely charismatic presence" but said she had little to do beyond playing the dutiful wife. The following year, a role as a girlfriend made of light was waiting.

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• 5. Hologram To Breakthrough

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  In Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 (2017), de Armas played Joi, the holographic AI girlfriend of a blade runner played by Ryan Gosling. Mark Kermode of The Guardian said she brought "three-dimensional warmth" to a character who is essentially a digital projection. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker found her "wondrous" and wrote: "Whenever Joi appears, the movie's imaginative heart begins to race."

  People first discussed the role as her breakthrough, but the film underperformed commercially. She spent much of the next year in Cuba, where she bought a house. The performance earned her a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. That same year she played the love interest of Scott Eastwood's character in the action thriller Overdrive. Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that she "radiates more kick-ass charisma than her thankless sidekick role might suggest."

  In 2018 John Hillcoat directed her opposite Demián Bichir in Corazón, a medical drama short. She played a Dominican woman with congestive heart failure in a film funded by Montefiore Medical Center to raise awareness of organ donation.

  A romantic subplot cost her a scene-stealing moment in the 2019 comedy Yesterday. Her scenes opposite Himesh Patel appeared in the trailer but vanished from the finished film. Director Danny Boyle said she was "really radiant," but a love triangle subplot did not test well with audiences.

  Rian Johnson's ensemble murder mystery Knives Out (2019) finally delivered the breakthrough. She played Marta Cabrera, an immigrant nurse. When first approached, she did not want to play a stereotypical "Latina caregiver," but she soon realized the character was "so much more than that."

  The film was a major box office success. She was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. She also won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress and, with the cast, the National Board of Review Award for Best Cast. Benjamin Lee of The Guardian said her "striking" performance left a "lasting impression." Tom Shone of The Times singled her out as the film's standout, the least well-known member of the cast, and credited her with the difficult task of "making goodness interesting."

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• 6. Bond And Beyond

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  Four films carrying her name reached US audiences in 2020, and they were a mixed lot. In the crime thriller The Informer she played the wife of Joel Kinnaman's character. Guy Lodge of Variety found the thin role more glaring after her Knives Out success. In the noir crime drama The Night Clerk she was a femme fatale. Katie Rife of The AV Club wrote that it would be remembered, "if at all, as a movie de Armas was way too good for."

  The Netflix biopic Sergio (2020) put her opposite Wagner Moura as Carolina Larriera, a U.N. official and the partner of the diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello. She reunited with Moura in Olivier Assayas's Netflix spy thriller Wasp Network, playing the wife of one of the Cuban Five. The production shot on location in Cuba, and it was her first work in her home country since leaving as a teenager. Jay Weissberg of Variety called her "a joyous, bewitching presence whose career seems destined for the big time."

  In 2021 director Cary Joji Fukunaga wrote the part of a Cuban CIA agent in No Time to Die with de Armas in mind. She joined Daniel Craig again as Paloma, whom she described as bubbly and "very irresponsible." Paloma claims to have little training, then proves highly skilled in a fight. The film grossed $774.2 million worldwide and drew positive reviews. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised her "witty and unworldly turn."

  Adrian Lyne's erotic thriller Deep Water, based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, cast her and Ben Affleck as a couple in an open marriage. In 2022 she starred in the Russo brothers' Netflix action thriller The Gray Man. Neither film was particularly successful with critics and audiences. Another 2022 release, a Netflix biopic about Marilyn Monroe, would turn out very differently.

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• 7. Becoming Marilyn

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  Director Andrew Dominik first noticed de Armas in Knock Knock, the thriller that critics had once held against her. Casting for the Netflix biopic Blonde (2022) took a long time, but Dominik secured the role for her after her first audition.

  Blonde is based on the biographical fiction novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, and she played Marilyn Monroe in the guise of Norma Jean. To prepare, she worked with a dialect coach for about nine months and read Oates's novel. She also said she studied hundreds of photographs, videos, audio recordings and films.

  Her casting drew criticism because she has a notable Spanish accent. The performance nonetheless won praise. Catherine Bray of Empire called it "powerful." Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair described her as "fiercely, almost scarily committed to the role."

  The Chicago Film Critics Association listed her for Best Actress in 2022. Nominations followed from the BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG voters in the same category. The Golden Globe nomination came in the Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama category, a different group of nominees from her earlier Globe nomination.

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• 8. Action Roles And Home Life

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  Ghosted (2023), an Apple TV+ action comedy, paired her with Chris Evans. Benjamin Lee of The Guardian panned the film and the lack of chemistry between the two stars. In 2023 she also hosted Saturday Night Live, in an episode that featured the musical guest Karol G.

  Ron Howard's survival thriller Eden (2024) placed her in an ensemble cast as The Baroness. She appears in the filmography as an executive producer on Ghosted as well.

  Her personal life spans three countries. De Armas holds Cuban, Spanish and US citizenship. She moved to Los Angeles at 26 and, as of 2023, lives in Vermont.

  In mid-2010 she began a relationship with the Spanish actor Marc Clotet. They married on the Costa Brava in July 2011 and divorced in early 2013. After meeting on the set of Deep Water in late 2019, she dated Ben Affleck from March 2020 to January 2021.

  Ballerina (2025), a spinoff in the John Wick franchise, made her the lead of an action thriller as a vengeful assassin named Eve Macarro. That character also became a playable figure in the Multiplayer modes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, as part of a collaboration with the film.

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