Ana de Armas / From ‘Bond’ to ‘Blonde’
It’s been quite the year for actress Ana de Armas – but things could have gone very differently had she stuck to her original suspicions over a role offered to her that called for a “pretty Latin caretaker.”
The seemingly reductive reasoning behind the Cuban-born de Armas being touted for such a part did not have the most enthusiastic effect on the star. In fact, her initial reaction was to turn down the role, saying: “because of the character description, my imagination immediately went to a portrayal that was not necessarily very positive or exciting in relation to Latin culture.”
It was only later, once she had got her hands on a physical copy of what turned out to be Rian Johnson’s script for murder-mystery Knives Out, that de Armas reconsidered.
“Getting an email that described the character like that — without any more information or a script attached because it was high-profile and secret — just really didn’t speak to me,” she says. “But I finally read the script, I realised that the description didn’t fit at all because Marta is so much more than that.”
For de Armas, the character of Marta Cabrera would usher in a new wave of acclaim – one that the 31-year-old Santa Cruz del Notre-native is currently riding high in Hollywood. Knives Out would go on to gross $200 million worldwide and earner her a Golden Globes nomination for best actress. Despite a brilliant ensemble cast that included the likes of Chris Evans, Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Toni Collette, it was de Armas’s central performance that caught the attention of the film industry.
But at first, de Armas admits to feeling like “an outsider” on set with so many high-profile names around her – “I was being thrown into a situation,” she explains, “that I had no idea how to survive.”
De Armas has not just survived; she has thrived. In the wake of her award-winning performance in Knives Out it was revealed that she was to take part in not one, but two, huge upcoming projects. Both are iconic for different reasons. The part of Paloma in the upcoming 25th instalment of the world-famous Bond franchise, No Time to Die, surely secures her a place in cinematic history, and beyond that the lead role in Blonde, a Marilyn Monroe biopic, will see de Armas transform into the legendary actress, model and singer.