“Ana de Armas reflected on her long friendship with Keanu Reeves and her unexpected evolution into an action star during an “In Conversation” session at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival on Friday, offering an intimate, career-spanning look at her rise from Cuba to global Hollywood star. De Armas said she and Reeves first”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
De Armas said she and Reeves first met when she arrived in Los Angeles over a decade ago and landed her first US part on Eli Roth’s Knock Knock. “When I first moved to LA, we did Knock Knock together, and at that time I barely spoke English,” she recalled. “It was kind of a frustrating journey not being able to fully communicate, but we still had a great time. We bonded really well, and we have a beautiful friendship.”
She described Reeves as “incredibly kind and generous,” suggesting that he was one of the first people to make her feel welcome in Hollywood. Reuniting with Reeves for Ballerinathe recently released John Wick spinoff, was especially meaningful: “It felt full circle. Keanu and Chad [Stahelski] have built such a beautiful world with those films, and having him there, supporting me ten years later, meant a lot.”
Discussing her role in BallerinaDe Armas said her evolution into an action star was entirely unplanned. “I never thought of myself as athletic or imagined I’d do action movies,” she said. “It started with No Time to Diethen The Gray Man and Ghostedand Ballerina was another level — very challenging, very demanding. But it was also an exciting character to play, and I really loved expanding that universe.”
The actress went on to describe the intense physical preparation the role required. “The training was brutal,” she said. “It went on for months before shooting and continued during filming. There’s no time to rehearse everything, so you’re learning and adapting on the spot. It was exhausting — but I enjoyed it. I learned so much.”
Throughout her talk, De Armas talked through the full sweep of her career, tracing it back to her childhood in Cuba, where she grew up performing with neighborhood friends. “I had a very happy childhood — very free and very social,” she said. “We would perform for our neighbors, do dances, and I was even in a Spice Girls group. I always knew I wanted to be an actress. There was no Plan B.”
At theater school in Havana, she made her screen debut while still a student. “Students weren’t supposed to work, but I auditioned and got the part,” she said. “I had to take a year off school, and it was hard to leave my friends, but being on set taught me more than being in class.”
After saving some money from her early films, De Armas made the bold choice to move to Madrid, Spain at the age of 18, on her own, to chase bigger opportunities. “I had saved some money from the movies I had done in Cuba — I think it was 300 euros,” she recalled. “At that time, in Cuba, 300 euros was a lot of money, so I thought that was going to be sufficient. And then I arrived in Spain and realized it wasn’t going to last long at all.” She slept on a friend’s couch for a few months until landing a role in a hit Spanish TV series, which quickly made her a household name. That success brought fame, but also frustration. “Because of that show, I was playing the same kind of young-girl roles for years,” she said. “I love Spanish cinema and Spanish directors, but I wasn’t getting the film work I wanted. That’s when I felt I had to leave.”
She took another leap by relocating to Los Angeles. “I moved with three suitcases and my dog,” she said. “I didn’t speak English — zero. It was the most humbling thing I’ve ever done. No one knew who I was, and my work in Spain and Cuba didn’t exist there. But I decided that if I was going to make it work, I had to give it everything.”
She felt her breakthrough truly came with Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049which she called “a dream.”
“Working with Denis, Ryan [Gosling]Harrison Ford and cinematographer Roger Deakins was incredible,” she said. “Denis is one of my favorite directors, very thoughtful, very sensitive. The way he communicates, the way he sits down and works through every scene with his actors, makes the process so special. I felt like a kid on set again.”
From there came No Time to Die. “Those fifteen minutes on screen changed my life,” she said. “Cary Fukunaga called me and said, ‘There’s no script yet, but there’s going to be a Cuban agent.’ And I said, ‘If there’s a Cuban agent in a Bond film, it’s going to be me.'” She added, laughing, that she had just finished filming Andrew Dominick’s Blonde and carried some of her Marilyn Monroe voice into her role on the Bond film. “Paloma still had a little bit of Marilyn in her — it just came out naturally,” she said. “It made her even more fun.”
Her portrayal of Monroe in Blonde earned her an Academy Award nomination and, she said, transformed her as an actress. “It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done, but also the most beautiful,” she explained. “Andrew [Dominik] pushed me to go to places I didn’t know I could go. It was nine months of research and preparation — learning Marilyn’s voice, her movement, her energy. It changed the way I approach acting.”
Near the end of her hour-long appearance, De Armas reflected on her continuing search for challenging material — and the new kind of typecasting she now occasionally faces. She said that after years of fighting to escape predictable roles early in her career, she’s aware of the risk of being pigeonholed again, this time by her recent success in action movies.
“Sometimes what the industry offers is not what I want to do,” she said. “It’s me who has to chase what’s next. Sometimes I feel like people think Blonde was a fluke, that somehow I just did it. But I’ve always been the one looking for what I want to do instead of waiting for what they offer. I’m not here to play it safe.”
The Red Sea Film Festival continues through to Dec. 13.