“It’s because of things like that that Ana is an excellent actress,” exclaimed Ben Affleck from across the Atlantic. In Deep Water, the Californian actor plays a husband who allows his wife to have an affair to avoid divorce, until he becomes the first suspect in his lover’s murder. “The first time we read the scenes together, it was quite clear to me that he was going to do something special with a very complex role. His character is the driving force of the story and requires moving between tragedy and irony or between realism and the most absurd comedy. Not only does he know how to do it with ease, but he can surprise you with every shot. His talent is limitless,” he admitted. Affleck is the latest in a series of Hollywood stars to praise her talent after working with her, from Ryan Gosling and Keanu Reeves to Denis Villeneuve, who directed her in Blade Runner 2049. Those are the names. which she admits, he wouldn’t have. even dreamed when he decided to settle in Madrid in 2007, the year he became a star thanks to El Internado, the Antena 3 phenomenon that reached nearly 5 million audiences in seven seasons. “After a childhood in Cuba having to deal with all that, those first years in Madrid were an impact that I didn’t know if I knew how to handle well. I’ve just come of age and don’t know anyone here, but I’m lucky that my colleagues have become my family,” he recalls of actors like Elena Furiase or Martiño Rivas, whom he set up. forming a friendship that lasts until today it serves him when it is still difficult to achieve the success he expected. “When the series started to take off, we couldn’t even go walking down the street. Elena, who has been used to fame all her life, held my hand and knew better than me how to handle an awkward question or a photographer following me. also my mother. The days when I was sick, crying and missing my parents in Cuba, the three of us lay in bed and made me laugh. “I think I still owe them how well they treated me.”
In a format that so many colleagues use to deliver a learned speech and discuss it with their representatives, it’s unusual that its newness is a weakness in their eyes. “It’s very difficult for me to press,” he interrupted, realizing the sincerity of his answer, or recounting a darker chapter of a path that many have known to light. “The truth is I don’t know what else to do,” he said, returning to his childhood roots. Ana Celia de Armas Caso was born 31 years ago in Havana, however, due to her father Ramón’s work, the family moved to the small city of Santa Cruz del Norte shortly after she was born. “My father worked in Congress and my mother worked in human resources at the Ministry of Education, but they were both very present. Those were the happiest years of my life, I guess that’s why I come back to Havana whenever things get bad,” he said. Far from the red carpets or private flights that she now includes in her routine, until the age of 14 she walked barefoot from home to the beach and her biggest concern was getting the role of Emma Bunton when she and her friends imitated her actions. Spice girl. “They were one of the few people who came to Cuba from the popular culture that emerged in the West. Even though I started understanding the lyrics only two years ago,” he jokingly admitted. This lack of resources nurtured an obsession with inventing characters and memorizing dialogues from television series to find hope for the future as his parents told him about National School of Drama at age 14. After months of struggling with tutors to get her to think about careers with more opportunities, she enrolled in interpreting. “I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do, but there’s nothing else I can do.”
Based on what has been seen in recent years, his decision has been successful. De Armas stood with her mother at the National School of Drama on the day of the audition and was chosen from over 500 children, after a ten-hour wait. She spent four years studying and in the second year of her career, in 2006, Cantabrian director Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón hired her for her professional debut in Una rosa de Francia, alongside Jorge Perugorria. “It was Jorge who remembered me months after meeting the actor on his birthday. School was very strict and I had to drop out of that course to be able to act, although they allowed me to come back to finish my studies. “I began to discover that there was more to the world than I had believed until then.”
The story of him arriving in Madrid with just 300 euros in his pocket is one of many myths that the press has fueled, as is the fact that his character in Danny Boyle’s film Today was dropped after the public saw it in there. in test screenings, he preferred her as the main character’s girlfriend over the one played by Lily James. Rumors aside, the Cuban pesos she brought to Spain were only enough for a few lunches and she had to survive on a friend’s couch for several months. “Apart from A Rose of France, he has only acted in two other films, Madrigal and Eden Lost. “I took what little money I had and brought it with me to Madrid, but I didn’t calculate exactly how much my savings were worth here,” he said with a laugh. “A few charity chairs were my salvation.” Another obvious and more effective rescue was The Boarding School, which aired from 2007 to 2010, thanks to which his face became so recognizable that the public fell in love with the novel and helped him get a spot. on the small screen in his homeland, but also made many people believe. that They are responsible for scrutinizing changes in her appearance as well as her love life (she was married to actor Marc Clotet from 2011 to 2013). “At first I was happy to feel important, because your ego gets used to that kind of attention, but then I understood that it was just an illusion. I started to struggle and when I decided to escape to New York for a few months, my agent at the time called me to get a role in the TV series Hispania (Spanish TV). They sold it to me as my life’s work and I went back to Madrid to do it, but I was very disappointed. I ended up feeling guilty for accepting it, thinking it was a step backwards in my career. Then I realized that Boarding School had greatly influenced the way film directors perceived me and the only way to change that was to take a radical leap.” This would be a great leap to cinema, in 2014, as the protagonist of the teen drama Por una Fist of Kisses, by David Menkes, who directed her in Lies and fat girls (2009). “I was so eager for the directors and producers to finally meet me that I decided to dye my hair fuchsia for the role, but I hardly received any offers until a year later. , when I did Hands of Stone with Jonathan Jakubowicz. I feel like it’s completely gone for the industry in this country.”
It seems funny that six years later, his film count has not dropped below five per year and his Golden Globe nomination is celebrated in Spain as a national holiday, despite Awkwafina’s snatched the award from him for the movie The Farewell. “The only way to get the opportunities I’ve been waiting for is to stop waiting and go out and find them for myself,” he reasoned. In four months, he went from not knowing a word of English to being bilingual, getting a decent apartment in Los Angeles and signing with Knock Knock (Eli Roth, 2015), shaking abandoned the reputation he had achieved in Spain. “It wasn’t the first decision I’ve had to make, but it was a lot harder than I expected. Now I won’t take anything for granted, I will fight every day to get closer to my dream.”
Talking to this woman with olive green eyes and unapologetic candor is a refreshing antidote to the paraphernalia that often surrounds any actor who has infiltrated Hollywood’s Olympus. After multiple changes of date, time and city for this interview, she was the one who insisted on a chat appointment with no timer and no red lines regarding the topics. “That’s one of the things I learned this time: to be sincere, not to fail, and to listen fairly to people who give their opinions on what my future will look like,” she replied. A certain defensive attitude is felt in his words, which he realizes given that he lives in a city where even the waitress in the cafe dreams of appearing on posters next to the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel. “I fought to escape the stereotype of being as much of a Latina as possible and more, but cinema is full of clichés and you can’t let your guard down. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t play an Cuban, as happens in No Time to Die. And my character, Marta Cabrera, is beautiful and elegant and walks around in jewelry and high heels. That is James Bond’s fantasy of the world. However, thanks to Cary Fukunaga’s script and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s dialogue, my character is not there to supplement the Bond story,” she explains, as there is a risk that the concept of a Bond girl could may become obsolete in the 21st century.
With Marilyn Monroe, the legend she will portray later this year, the internal conflicts are similar. “Director Andrew Dominik has been trying to adapt Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde for ten years. He considered several actresses but for some reason, the project never took off. When he saw Knock Knock, he contacted me and sent me the script. Right after I did the testing, and a few weeks later they told me it was for me,” he recalls. So far, we’ve only seen what the oxygen wig looks like in a few locations in Los Angeles, but Ana promises that playing Norma Jean Baker has changed her life. “The first thing I thought when I read the content was that it was a horror movie, a dark and very sad story that didn’t fit with what I knew about it. That’s why I thought it would be a difficult movie to get into and it would be very violent to see what he had to go through until his death. Then I spent a year working on her voice, watching her movies over and over again, and I won’t lie to you, I ended up obsessed with her.” When she came back New Orleans to finish filming Deep Water, Ben Affleck tracked her down after the first take and told her: “You left as an actress, and I just did a scene with a completely different person, and that for an actor is almost a miracle.”
That feeling, along with eating whatever you want or feeling really bored, is one of the things that drives your desires away from the typical American dream. “I want to read a book, finish furnishing the house I just bought in Cuba, escape for two weeks to some exotic place. I don’t have a single free day on my calendar for the next few months and I’m afraid it will leave me exhausted and tired. In fact, from what I’m telling you, I’ll be planning a trip soon,” he said, while taking out his cell phone to firmly write down his goals. As she rises to the top of Hollywood, even the fiercest warrior needs to sheathe her sword to remember that her greatest fight is herself.
Makeup: Mélanie Inglessis (Forward Artist). Hairstylist: Rob Talty (Forward Artist). Manicure: Jolene Brodeur (The Wall Group). Styling assistant: Laura Sueiro. Design: Jacqueline Cingolani. On-set producer: Tommy Romersa (Joy Asbury).
