Ana de Armas has become Hollywood‘s fashionable actress. The Cuban star, who was trained in Spain and began to stand out in series such as El Internado, almost won an Oscar with Blonde, the film in which she played Marilyn Monroe. But now she has two more big releases in her sights: Ballerina and Ghosted.
Ballerina will tell the story of an assassin from the world of John Wick who comes from a very different place than Keanu Reeves‘ character. The screenwriters believe it’s going to be a story that lives up to the saga, and Ana de Armas is the best one to bring it to life:
“The film will introduce a character who has gone through virtually the same training as John Wick, but at Anjelica Huston’s dance academy that we saw in the third film. We will become part of a new type of community that also remains in the shadows and that really has nothing to do with what we have seen in the previous films of the saga”.
Meanwhile, Ghosted is the next Apple TV+ movie to be directed by Dexter Fletcher and will bring together action, comedy and romance starring De Armas and Chris Evans. It’s a spy feature camouflaged in an initial story of falling in love, and its trailer couldn’t look better:
A new star on Saturday Night Live
It is clear that Ana de Armas has earned the career she is pursuing in Hollywood, and for example there is nothing better than the fact that she has presented Saturday Night Live with Karol G. In the presentation post you can see her great adaptation in the industry; on the set she walks around as if she was at home.
As we saw with Úrsula Corberó, when an international actress steps in -and even more, if she hosts- Saturday Night Live, she goes from being a promise to a big star in a second. So, in case it wasn’t clear with her Oscar nomination, Ana de Armas is the actress of the moment in Hollywood. However, her past has not always been so rosy.
A childhood in poverty
Ana de Armas was born in 1988 as the youngest of three siblings in Santa Cruz del Norte, Cuba. Despite what it may seem, her family was humble: her father worked as a teacher and her mother was an accountant. However, from a very young age, the actress showed a great interest in the performing arts, and her family supported her as much as they could.
De Armas enrolled in a theater school in her hometown. And, at the age of 14, she decided she wanted to be an actress and began taking acting classes. But Cuba was too small for someone who wanted to go as far as she could, so in 2022 she moved to Madrid, Spain, to continue her training. The actress has explained on more than one occasion that her family had to sell their house in Cuba in order to finance her education in Spain. An effort that, as we have seen, was well worth it.
Although the series was not the pinnacle of quality, De Armas won an Ondas award in 2008 for her role. And little by little she was signed for films such as Una rosa de Francia, Mentiras y gordas or El callejón. But her years in Spain, again, were too short. And in 2014 she decided to move to Los Angeles to continue her career in Hollywood.
Quickly, opportunities arose for the Cuban actress. In 2014 she made her Hollywood debut in the film Fury, directed by David Ayer and starring Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf. Interestingly, De Armas played a young German girl named Emma, who helps a group of American soldiers at the end of World War II.
Her performance in Hearts of Steel caught the attention of Hollywood film critics and casting directors. In 2015, De Armas was cast to play Julia, the wife of Keanu Reeves’ character in Knock Knock, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
In 2016, the actress starred in Hands of Stone, a biopic about Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán. And in 2017 came another of the roles of her life: Blade Runner 2049, by Denis Villenueve. Her sublime and mystical performance once again opened many doors for her and put her on Hollywood’s radar.
It was in 2019, when Rian Johnson cast her as the lead in Knives Out, that she took the last big step she had left, beyond her incorporation in the latest James Bond. And while she had a short but intense relationship with Ben Affleck, she continued to make it clear that she is a great actress with an impressive future ahead of her.
Blonde has been the pinnacle of a career that started from the bottom and has undoubtedly reached the top. Although she did not manage to win the Oscar as the new Marilyn Monroe of Hollywood, it has undoubtedly continued to open doors for a career that continues to take off.
Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.
