F
OR THE RECORD, she does
have clothing. It’s just all in
New Orleans, where she’s
filming Deep Water. And, for
the record, Hollywood is “not my life,
it’s my reality.”
“I have great friends, and incredible
things have happened for me here, but the
lifestyle and the exposure and the con-
stant business situations are not for me.
I like talking about life and art and babies
and pets. Acting is what I love to do, but I
can’t talk about it, not all the time.” Or, to
quote Marilyn Monroe: “It’s good to have
caviar but not when you have it at every
meal.” Beans, maybe. But not caviar.
Thus de Armas is moving back to
Havana for now, half an hour from the
beach town where she grew up. As a kid,
she didn’t sneak into the city because “it’s
a big deal to go when you don’t have trans-
portation.” Instead, she and her friends
entertained themselves and the neighbors
by acting, dancing, and singing (she was
Baby Spice in an adorably amateur Spice
Girls cover band but didn’t understand
the lyrics to “Wannabe” until she heard
it on the radio a few years ago). Eventu-
ally, her parents enrolled her in theater
school. (“I would hitchhike every single
morning, just stand next to the stoplight,
where the cars have to stop anyway, go to
the window, and tell people where I need-
ed to go.”) But American films weren’t a
glimmer in her eye, mostly because she
couldn’t see herself in them.
“I would see the houses and airplanes
and all the money and people robbing
banks and it clearly wasn’t real, just the
way princesses weren’t real. It was fanta-
sy. The Cuban actors were the ones I was
looking at because that was my reality—
people getting in a boat or screaming at
one another or killing a pig.”
De Armas left for Madrid at 18, as soon
she legally could, only able to because
her maternal grandparents are Spanish.
There, things fell into place quickly. She
got an agent through a movie she’d made
two years prior “and then got lucky and
a week later, a casting director called.”
De Armas starred in El Internado (The
Boarding School), which was “a massive
hit, a little like Stranger Things.” Only
after she felt like she’d outgrown it both
creatively (she felt “uninspired”) and
practically (she was still playing a teen-
ager) did she come to the States. I find
it difficult to imagine that Hollywood
wasn’t the endgame, given how well
she’s taken to it and it to her. (As Bobby Finger put it about
de Armas on the Who? Weekly podcast: “[It’s funny]...when
someone’s like, ‘This talented woman is about to be every-
where,’ and then you look at them and you’re like, ‘Yeah, no
shit.’ ”) But, as de Armas reminds me, context is key. Hers was
“one of the few Cuban families with no one in Miami even. The
conversation was always Spain.”
“People ask ‘How did you make this choice or that?’ But
there was only ever one choice at a time. I’ve never seen my
life in two ways, the way I wanted it and plan B. There was only
ever the way I wanted it.”O
NE GETS THE SENSE there’s not a lot out of de Armas’s
reach. Her Knives Out costar Jamie Lee Curtis had
no idea who she was when they met. In a scene
straight out of Notting Hill, she says she “thought
Ana was this piece of unmolded clay and I asked her about her
goals like I’m talking to a college student, and then I emailed
Steven fucking Spielberg, saying his casting department should
really look into this woman, as if she didn’t even have an agent.”
A year later, Curtis is in a better position to assess her friend’s
determination: “She is remarkable. She’s going to be like
Sophia Loren, one of those rare crossover worldwide sensa-
tions. She’s got this exquisite depth and is singularly gentle andinsanely beautiful, but also she is a girl from Cuba so there’s
that tenacity and perseverance and fierceness to her.”
Such depth of characterization was absent from the ini-
tial description of de Armas’s Knives Out character. Marta
was boiled down to: “Latina caretaker, pretty” and de Armas
almost didn’t take the part.
She points out that Latina actors are still frequently pigeon-
holed using words like sensuality and fire.
“Or else it’s ‘sexy with a temper.’ And it’s who we are. There’s
nothing wrong with it so long as it’s not only that. That’s what I
have a problem with.”
“You mean you don’t wake up every morning, put on a short
skirt, and start screaming at people?”
“Oh, well, yeah, I do that until I get exhausted, and then I
put a basket of fruit on my head and say, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ and
then I take a break and do it again.”
As much as she avoids stereotyping in her work, she thinks
that it has, on occasion, been useful behind the scenes, particu-
larly in a pre-#MeToo Hollywood. She credits her parents for
teaching her“about men and boundaries and how to speak out”
and describes herself as “quick and capable and I-don’t-give-a-
shit.” And while she considers herself lucky to have worked with“Bond girl” can be as reductiveas “Latina caretaker, pretty.”