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“It was such a roller coaster that at times I thought ‘Rubia’ wouldn’t make it.”
This is what Ana de Armas confessed to the magazine Variety in September about his experience in the film Blondein which she plays Marilyn Monroe.
But this biopic unconventional written and directed by Andrew Dominik has earned the actress 34 year old Cuban her first Oscar nomination, a feat never before accomplished by an actress from the Caribbean island.
De Armas was also nominated for the Golden Globes for this film (as in 2019 for her role as Marta Cabrera in Knives Out).
It is something extraordinary for an artist who, although she was already known in Spain, few had heard of in Hollywood until 2016.
image source, 2022 © Netflix
Here we tell you several aspects that you may not have known about his origins and his meteoric career.
1. He grew up in Havana
Born in Santa Cruz del Norte, Cuba, on April 30, 1988, Ana de Armas grew up in Havana.
At the age of 12, she decided she wanted to be an actress. inspiredAs he has told in several interviews, for the movie “Matilda”.
Her dream began to take shape when she was selected to attend the National Art School of Cuba, where she studied for several years.
His film debut came in 2006, with the film “A Rose from France”.
It was his first success and gave way to other works such as the movie “Madrigal” and the soap opera “El edén perdido”.
2. In Spain his career took off with the series “El internado”
When he turned 18, De Armas left Cuba to move to Spain, the country of which he is a national because his maternal grandparents are Spanish.
She says that she arrived in Madrid confident that she would be able to live on savings (about US$220) that lasted much less than she thought. But her success awaited right there.
Recently arrived in the Spanish capital, De Armas auditioned and was hired for the series “El internado”, her springboard to fame.
image source, Getty Images
“El internado” on Antena 3 was his ticket to success in Spain.
He worked on the successful Antena 3 series for three seasons (2007-2009)until she herself asked the producers to kill off her character, Carolina Lealso that he can focus on his film career.
Although he did not lack for projects -in the following years he participated in “Lies and fat”, “The calley” and “For a fistful of kisses”-, the young woman aspired to interpret other types of roles and began to consider another change of life.
3. He made the leap to Hollywood and his career skyrocketed
After divorcing the Catalan actor Marc Clotet, whom she had married just two years earlier, in 2014De Armas sold what he had in Madrid and moved to the United States.
Settled in Los Angeles, California, important job offers would soon begin to rain down on her.
Impressed by the actress’s performance in a chapter of “El internado”, the Venezuelan director Jonathan Jakubowicz sought her out to give her the role of the wife of the Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán in “Hands of stone”, with Edgar Ramírez and Robert de Niro.
image source, Getty Images
De Armas’ Hollywood career began to take off with Keanu Reeves in “Knock Knock.”
She hadn’t finished that job when director Eli Roth cast her in the thriller Knock Knock along with actor Keanu Reeves, with whom he also worked on his next film, “The Daughter of God” (2016).
From that moment on, and after being signed by the most important agent agency in Hollywood (Creative Artists Agency), his Hollywood career skyrocketed.
image source, Getty Images
Ana de Armas was a “Bond girl” in “No Time to Die”.
In 2017, she landed the role that would catapult her career: Joi, a hologram created by artificial intelligence who was Ryan Gosling’s virtual girlfriend in Blade Runner 2049.
Shortly after, another of her milestones was confirmed: the young Cuban woman became the new Bond girl in the film. No Time to Die (“No Time to Die”), which premiered in April 2020.
And that year his performance in Knives Out (translated as “Between knives and secrets” or “Daggers in the back”), his first comedic role since he landed in the US, earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
image source, IMDB
The character of Marta Cabrera earned Ana de Armas a Golden Globe nomination.
This year he competed again for an award for the best of cinema and TV granted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, this time for embodying the “blonde temptation” in Blondea role for which she is now nominated for the Oscar for best actress.
4. He had a hard time learning English (and criticism for how he speaks it)
Actually, one of the reasons why De Armas changed Madrid for Los Angeles was, as he has said, to learn English.
Thus, upon arrival in the Californian city he turned to classesl language, to which he devoted six hours a day.
image source, 2022 © Netflix
After several months at this rate, he began to attend auditions in English and learn the dialogues phoneticallywhich left him a good catalog of anecdotes.
In several interviews, she has recounted, for example, how overwhelmed she felt while filming “Game of Arms” (War Dogs) by Tom Phillips.
“I was doing a scene with Miles Teller and he changed my lines, and I couldn’t. We had to put in the lines from before, because there was no way I would say that“, he confessed in an interview with the Spanish program El Hormiguero.
“It’s been a long process, many years. But making a character like Marilyn Monroe (…), a real person that we’ve all heard, an icon, with a very specific voice… was another level of work.”
In an interview with Variety in September she explained how, although she was already the favorite of director Andrew Dominik for the role of Marilynhe had to convince Netflix, the distributor of the tape, of this during a screen test.
She went to the appointment with her diction teacher, who dictated the correct pronunciation of the lines while she did the test. The scene chosen was one in which Monroe asks her husband Joe DiMaggio to let her move to New York to “start over, away from Hollywood.”
image source, 2022 © Netflix
Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in the biopic “Blonde” with Adrien Brody, who plays the writer Arthur Miller, who was her third husband.
“I knew that everything I did that day was going to be decisive for the film to have the green light,” he told the specialized magazine. “But I was doing worse and worsewhich was a reminder that I wasn’t good enough.”
What he did was take advantage of that insecurity and use it for the character. “I embraced my fears and my vulnerability, feeling uncomfortable and my insecurities,” she explained.
“I approached the whole movie using those emotions, the way I felt playing the role”.
But her portrayal, while highlighted by awards season pundits, has also earned her criticism.
When the trailer was released last August, some voices in social networks they attacked the pronunciation of De Armasconsidering it inappropriate.
Other users came to their defense and accused the haters of intolerance and xenophobia, and they also defended it from the firm Authentic Brands Group (ABG), owner of the image rights of “the blonde bombshell”, and Brad Pitt, whose company Plan B has co-produced the film.
“It was more to capture his essence, his spirit, and understand why he spoke like that, rather than trying to copytheDe Armas explained at the time.
On March 12 it will be known if all that work will be enough to win the Oscar for best actress.
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