Ana de Armas’s story seems the kind of Hollywood fairytale the industry doesn’t much make any more. After all, the 32-year-old actress’s rise takes in a childhood spent in Cuba, far from the trappings of Tinseltown or any type of capitalism; a bolt to Spain to make it with just €300 in her pocket; a second bolt to Los Angeles, where she spoke so little English that she had to learn her lines on her first film phonetically; and finally a move into the big leagues, with starring roles in Blade Runner: 2049 and the comic thriller Knives Out.
In fact, when you consider that she will be seen playing both Marilyn Monroe and a Bond girl this year and she’s dating Ben Affleck (although since this interview took place, they are rumoured to have split; when we contacted her rep, we were told: “We do not have any information to share”), it’s hard to imagine how she could arrive in Hollywood any harder, unless she camped out under its legendary sign plonked on the side of Mount Lee.
“I don’t know,” she shrugs via Zoom from her home in LA. “I’ve always felt like, this thing of being in the right place at the right time with the right people, that has kind of been my life.” She is sitting in a sort of broom cupboard where the computer servers are clearly kept; the only signs of A-list glamour are on her, in her lavender Acne cardigan, bright blue-and-red print trousers and lots of little, discreet jewels on her fingers, ears and neck.
Also, a cute little doggy, Elvis, who keeps wanting to be let in and out. “I feel like being brave, combined with that, has made me feel lucky. So every time I have that instinct, that my gut is telling me to get on a plane, I go with it — because I feel like the result of that is gonna be good!”
This is obviously some understatement. If you’ve seen Knives Out, you’ll know she eats up the screen. In a film that co-stars Daniel Craig, Chris Evans and Jamie Lee Curtis, it’s De Armas who, to your surprise, turns out to be the lead. Curtis was also surprised, and was so enchanted with her co-star that she fired off emails to Steven Spielberg to watch out for this hot new thing. He said thank you, he knew already.
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“I don’t think Spielberg was the only one — she sent a few emails to people,” De Armas smiles now. “And everyone was, like, ‘Yeah, Jamie …’ ”
There is a lot of past and future to discuss, but we are here ostensibly to talk about her new role as the face of the Natural Diamond Council, which pushes for more ethical mining of diamonds. Most recently this has meant fronting a campaign on its Only Natural Diamonds platform; the website highlights resources, information and designers that work with natural diamonds.
De Armas is keen to discuss how important the NDC’s work is: “What I really liked about them is that they have always been about full transparency and communication, and they’ve been helping me educate myself. I’ve been impressed by how the industry has evolved over the past 20 years. It feels good not just to buy something that’s beautiful and pretty, but also where it feels like these companies are giving back to the community. People want accountability and to know that everything is being done in an ethical way, and you feel good when you buy it, whatever product that is. I’m happy that the diamond industry is going in that direction.”
She is wearing several ethical diamonds, little delicate things, mostly “gifts”, she beams. Gifts, I ask. “Gifts,” she says levelly. Naturally I feel compelled to ask if there is any specific diamond she would like on any specific finger. She looks at me drolly, then flashes her hands, spread out, at the camera. “Do you see it? Nothing.” We’ll get to Affleck later, then. Instead she prefers to recall the first time she bought diamonds for herself — a little bracelet. “For me it was a big deal, coming from Cuba without the ability to buy anything really expensive. It was a moment.”
Diamonds were, of course, not an option when De Armas was growing up between Havana and the seaside town Santa Cruz del Norte, the daughter of a father who worked as a teacher and a mother who works in human resources. “So many other things are not an option there — forget about diamonds,” she says drily. “You don’t even think about it — it’s just not in the picture.” De Armas had a nice life though, she says, and she still calls it home.
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“When you’re a child, you don’t really know what the deal is,” she says. “And also you don’t know anything else, for better or worse.” She lived very close to the beach, so she would go swimming every day and she never had the time to get bored. “I’d not change that for anything,” she says. “I think probably my imagination got activated, because I was just coming up with games, playing on the street, pretending with other kids … It probably helped with who I am today and what I do.”
She won a place at the country’s only official drama school, the National Theatre School, which she trekked to dutifully every day, and filmed two hit movies as a teenager. She left Cuba aged 18, heading to Spain because her maternal grandparents were from there.
Could she have stayed at home? “I don’t think so. I just felt like I’ve always wanted more in everything in my life. I’ve been very ambitious and curious and I wanted to do more.” The move to Spain was pretty innocent, she says. “In Cuba you live in a bubble. I didn’t know what the world was like. I had never travelled before in my life.”
She genuinely believed that the €300 would be enough, but “sometimes not knowing too much doesn’t let you overthink too much”, she says. “I guess — and I mean it in the best possible way — being ignorant about some things may help you, because you don’t have any fear. I just went and did it. If I had to do it now, knowing what it’s like and what I had to go through, I’d be scared. But I’m glad I did it. I didn’t think about it twice.”
It probably helped that De Armas bagged a role on the huge Spanish hit television series El Internado just a few weeks after arriving in Madrid. After a few years on the show, though, and a two-year marriage to the Spanish actor and model Marc Clotet, she upped sticks again for LA. Wasn’t that scarier? “It was kind of the same situation again,” she says sanguinely. “I guess I did it twice.” The only small impediment was that she had to learn English, but that didn’t stop her going for films as she was learning. Thus it was that she ended up in movies alongside the likes of Robert De Niro, Keanu Reeves and Miles Teller, scraping by on having learnt the words by their sounds alone. “In the beginning I was not getting it at all,” she cringes. “But, you know, it’s getting better!”
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All of which leads us to Blonde, the new Marilyn Monroe biopic based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name. So did she nail Marilyn’s voice?
“I tried! It only took me nine months of dialect coaching, and practising, and some ADR sessions [rerecording dialogue after filming],” she says with a grimace. “It was a big torture, so exhausting. My brain was fried.” And regardless of the voice, playing Marilyn was also pretty draining. “I had a lot of thoughts as a woman in the industry, and even in general, about how things from the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s are so relatable to nowadays,” she says. “And how if you don’t have a strong base, with your family and so on, it’s really hard to make it through — really hard.”
And then there is the forthcoming Deep Water, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, which is where she met Affleck. Indeed, if the usual film promotion wheels stopped turning last year, De Armas still caught everyone’s attention when her relationship with Affleck went public in the spring. During the first lockdown, few days went by without paparazzi shots of the couple walking the streets of LA with Elvis. She wore cute outfits, he wore Spanish language T-shirts. “I also have these T-shirts, I just use them more at home, but Ben has become obsessed with them,” she smiles. “Every time we go, he buys the whole store.”
This is the year De Armas’s talent will go mainstream. Talking about her role in No Time to Die, she is enthusiastic about Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who provided rewrites for the film (“I went tomato red when I met her!”). I wonder if her parents will make it to the premiere, assuming there was one. I read somewhere that they have never yet made it to a premiere of hers.
“That’s true,” she nods. “It’s not easy for them to get here for a lot of reasons… but it’s not impossible,” she says. “I’m sure it’s gonna happen.” Is it mad for them that you’ve ended up a film star? “Oh yeah. It blows their minds, it’s too much for them.” However, she adds, “sometimes, you know, I’ll call my mum and say, ‘I’m doing this movie,’ and she’ll say, ‘Who’s in it?’ And I’ll be, like, ‘I am!’ ” You do doubt she’ll be having that kind of chat for much longer.
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Ana de Armas is the global ambassador for Only Natural Diamonds; naturaldiamonds.com
Styling: Karolyn Pho. Hair: Lona Vigi at A-Frame Agency. Make-up: Mélanie Inglessis at Forward Artists. Nails: Ashlie Johnson at the Wall Group
