T
THERE IS A DOOR that separates celebrities from civilians, leav-
ing those of us curious enough to peer through the keyhole with
an incomplete idea of fame. Here, for example, is the keyhole
version of Ana de Armas, the 31-year-old breakout star of last
year’s Knives Out: She darts across the dining room of Versailles,
the Culver City outpost of Miami’s famed Cuban restaurant,
like she’s trying to shave a few seconds off her time. It’s the day
before the Golden Globes, and she has just come from a facial,
which puts one in mind of a butler polishing already gleam-
ing silverware. What is here for an esthetician to excavate I do
not know. De Armas has been nominated for her portrayal of
Marta Cabrera, the moral compass of the whodunit ensemble,
and while she will not win the award, she will win the red car-
pet in a navy sequined Ralph & Russo gown, a crystalline Snow
White with borderline anime eyes. As the lights flicker above
us, she smiles and says, “Just like Cuba.” Oh, but de Armas’s
light shows no signs of dimming!
End of keyhole.
‘
I
T’S IMPOSSIBLE, RIGHT? To capture a whole person,
to understand someone else’s life without context.
I don’t see this moment and I’m in the middle of
it. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to, and by the time
I can, it will have changed.”
Freshly yet firmly on the other side of fame’s door, de Armas
is in the rare position to fling it open, to be frank about what
it means to be in the spotlight, to have your life reduced to a
stereotype, to be sick of Los Angeles (by the time you read this,
she’ll be gone). Just a few years ago she was spending seven
hours a day sitting in a classroom, learning to speak English,
which she did in four months. Now she’s one of Hollywood’s
most efficient multitaskers: She’s about to appear in No Time to
Die, the 25th James Bond movie, in a role conceived for her by
Cary Joji Fukunaga and written (mostly)
by Phoebe Waller-Bridge; she stars in
the upcoming erotic thriller Deep Water
with Ben Affleck, directed by Adrian
Lyne, as well as in The Night Clerk, with
Helen Hunt, and in Netflix’s political
drama Sergio; she will be going back to
her roots (she was a towheaded child)
to become Marilyn Monroe in Blonde.
The fact that her earlier work along-
side Ryan Gosling (Blade Runner 2049)
and Keanu Reeves (twice, Exposed and
Knock Knock) is already so far down her
IMDB page is fairly astounding. So how
did she get here?
Beans, partly.
“I am so excited for this food,” she
says, tearing apart a piece of bread you
could wring butter out of, “which is crazy,
because I just came from two weeks in
Cuba. This is my fuel.”
De Armas owns a home in Havana,
where the majority of her friends and
family still live. Two minutes in her com-
pany invokes easy images of a dreamlike
Havana. She spent New Year’s at a “roof
party in the old part of Havana, playing
music and dancing and drinking.” But
things are more complicated than they
seem. That party was full of actors she’s
long admired “who said how proud they
were, and that now I was the example for
Cuban actors.” She cries just recounting
it. Her parents have never been able to
attend one of her film premieres. They
see her work “later, like a bad copy or
something.” In what should be satire,
some L.A. acquaintances have gone so
far as to tell her they envy the “digital
detox” of Cuba or the fun of “not know-
ing what you’re going to eat for break-
fast.” When the country was briefly open
during the Obama administration, she
heard concerns it would be overrun by
Starbucks—“Americans complain about
something existing, but then when
they don’t have it, they also complain.”
Consider her answer to “What are you
wearing?” which should be the celebrity
equivalent of spelling your name cor-
rectly on the SATs:
“I don’t have any clothing.”
“Come again?”
“I came straight from Havana, so I’ve
been wearing my plane clothes. My suit-
cases go full of clothing or medicine or
supplies—whatever people need—and
come back empty. My stylist gave me this
Saint Laurent suit so I’d look cool. I don’t
wear this in real life.”
STRONG BOND
Ana de Armas,
photographed in
Beverly Hills.
Dress by Valentino.
82 VANITY FAIR
