THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 67 NOVEMBER 6, 2019
De Armas notes that she has
worked hard to avoid being
typecast. After attending Cuba’s
National Theater School, she
moved to Spain when she 18.
“Literally two weeks after I
moved, I was cast as one of the
lead actors in a new TV show that
became like the most successful
TV show for the next three years,”
she says of booking El Internado,
a drama set at a boarding school.
But after a few years in Madrid,
she found herself outgrowing it —
she was 22 playing 16. She moved
to Los Angeles, where her Hands
of Stone co-star Édgar Ramírez
introduced her to his agent.
The problem was, she didn’t
speak English. She found herself
at CA A, sitting with “a full team
that I really couldn’t commu-
nicate with,” she says. She even
booked a major horror film, Knock
Knock with Keanu Reeves, without
speaking the language. “I learned
it phonetically,” she says. “I wasn’t
really sure what I was saying.”
She quickly enrolled in English
classes and, as soon as she could
say a few words, called her team
with a mandate — she didn’t want
to go out for Latin-specific roles:
“I said, ‘I don’t want to audition
for Maria, Juana and Lola and all
these things. I want to audition
for the same parts that everybody
is auditioning for.’ ”She booked War D ogs with
Miles Teller and Jonah Hill and
Overdrive with Scott Eastwood. A
role in 2017’s Blade Runner 2049
as Ryan Gosling’s love interest
was supposed to be her breakout,
but the film underperformed. “I
think I was home literally doing
nothing for a year,” she says. The
paycheck did allow her to buy her
first big splurge, a house in Cuba,
which she still visits regularly.
When her agents told her about
a role in Knives Out, Johnson’s
comedic mystery ensemble, she
was put off by the “pretty Latina
caretaker” logline and passed
on even auditioning. “I’m like,
‘Latina again, really? No! I amnot doing this.’ ” She only agreed
to go in when they sent her
the script and she realized the
part was the heart of the film,
a kind caregiver with secrets of
her own who is swept up in the
family drama (and vomits when
she’s lying). “She’s obviously got
tremendous skills as an actor,”
says Johnson, who cast her, “but
those eyes, man, you just look at
those eyes and instantly you’re
on her side.” (The film features
her Bond co-star Craig as well as
Toni Collette, Chris Evans and
Michael Shannon.)
It was Bond producer Broccoli,
who has overseen the franchise
with her half brother Michael
G. Wilson since 1995, who first
thought of de Armas for No Time
to Die. The two had met five years
earlier, when de Armas, still
new to L.A., was brought to Soho
House by Knock Knock producerLY NCH