Ana de Armas talks about life in the spotlight and the film "Blonde"
Cuban actress Ana de Armas confronts her most challenging role to date: the inimitable Marilyn Monroe. And it underlines the lesser known, independent and feminist aspect of the Hollywood star.
Photography by Thomas Whiteside
Styling by Samantha McMillen
Los Angeles, Valentine's Day 2018. A Marilyn Monroe impersonator is driving around Hollywood. Instead of the usal celebrity impersonator hired to deliver some messages, it's Ana de Armas, in a cheap blonde wig leading to her first audition for the lead part in "Blonde". A makeup artist friend helped her into the part. "We chose the make-up that we thought came as close to her as possible," she recalls "Sure, it was a long way from how it was created for the film, but I think it helped." Andrew Dominik, the director, has been trying for ten years to make "Blonde", based on the novel of the same name by Carol Oates (and at various times there has been talk of Jessica Chastain and Naomi Watts as involved in the project). At the end of the audition - the dating scene that appears in the trailer with Bobby Canavale, whose character is modeled around the figure of Monroe's ex-husband, Joe DiMaggio - Dominik knew he has found his Marilyn Monroe. As well as Brad Pitt, whose production company, Plan B, produced the Netflix film, making its streaming debut on September 23. "Blonde took ten years to come true," Pitt said recently in an interview with Entretainment Tonight, "until we found Ana we couldn't cross the finish line."
Scroll down to find out the whole interview with Ana de Armas
Not bad for Ana de Armas' first starting role. The 34-year-old acress who grew up in Cuba and studied acting at the National School of Theater in Havana for four years, before moving to Spain and participating in a handful of films and TV shows. She then moved to Los Angeles in 2014 after being cast as Felicidad Iglesias, the wife of the famous Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán, in the biopic "Hands of Stone" with Édgar Ramírez and Robert De Niro. A native Spanish speaker, de Armas has landed roles in films directed by Todd Philips ("Trafficanti", 2016) and Denis Villenueve ("Blade Runner 2049", 2017), while engaging in full-immersion in English. Four years after her arrival in Tinseltown (Hollywood), de Armas was chosen to play one of the most recognizable icons in American history. "I didn't grow up knowing Marilyn or her films," she admits. "I am proud of Andrew's trust in me and that I have a chance to make it. I think everyone would have felt the pressure, Cuban or American, indifferently."
"My job wasn't to imitate her. I was interested in her feelings, her path, her insecurities and her voice, in the sense that she didn't really have one."
It was a year and a half from the time de Armas secured the role of Marilyn Monroe until she actually stepped foot in the set of "Blonde". Meanwhile, the acress worked with a dialect coach and did intense research. "My job was not to imitate her. I was interested in her feelings, her path, her insecurities and her voice, in the sense that she didn't really have one." The film is consistent with Oates' novel, a fictional transposition of Monroe's life. Born in Norma Jeane Mortenson to Gladys Pearl Baker, a single mother and positional actress with an unresolved mental health and addiction problem - rendered by Julianne Nicholson's brilliant and heartbreaking performance - "Blonde" follows Monroe from the restless years of maternal care, to heer life as an orphan, pin-up and, later, an icon of the silver screen. Norma Jean shared with her mother a love for short films and the escapism they provide, so Marilyn Monroe becomes her mythical alter ego. In almost all stages of her life, the people who should have cared about her have since left her.
In showing Monroe as a whole - ambitious, determined, bubbly, but also marred by rape, abuse and rampant misogyny - Dominik and de Armas offer a boarder perspective of everything she has had to endure, all the way to her tragic end of an overdose of barbituarates. In one particularly poignant scene from "Blonde", de Armas' Monroe is screaming hysterically during a routine exercise in an acting class. When the teacher asks her what she is thinking, she replies "I wasn't thinking... maybe I was remembering?" The doors of Hollywood have opened wide for Ana de Armas after the interpretation of the humble caretaker Marta Cabrera in "Dinner with Crime", the mystery shot by Rian Johnson that in 2019 led her to the nomination for Best Actress at the Golden Globe. And then it was Paloma, a sexy CIA agent based in Cuba, in "No time to die", of the James Bond saga, followed by "The gray man" (2022), whose world premiere de Armas has enchanted everyone with a Louis Vuitton dress, of which he is an ambassador. As is Global Brand Ambassador for Estée Lauder and face of the National Diamond Council.
After filming "Deep Waters," she was in a relationship with co-star, Ben Affleck. The relationship became easy prey for the tabloids, and de Armas admitted that kind of scrunity was one of the reasons she wanted to leave Los Angeles. She and Ben Affleck broke up in January 2021; she currently lives in New York and is dating Paul Boukadakis, a Tinder executive. "Something from this interview will be extrapolated and it will turn into something else," says de Armas. "It's scary because there is nothing you can really do. That's why having a family and people who love you is so important. And Marilyn didn't have any. If you think about it, it's easy to see why it falls apart. People can be so careless when commenting on someone's life, body, sexuality, or relationships. It can really hurt." "Blonde" is off-limits to anyone under the age of 17, the first time it happens on Netflix, a fact that has caused a stir in itself. The hypersexualized figure of Monroe - whether it was a reflection of her desires or how people took advantage of her - is something Dominik chose to address directly. Ana de armas agrees: "I don't understand why it happened," referring to the classification. "I can name a number of shows or movies that are much more explicit and with a lot more sexual content than 'Blonde'. But to tell you this story it's important to show all those moments in Marilyn's life that brought her to the end she did. It must be explained. Everyone in the cast knew we would have to go into unpleasant territory, it wasn't just me."
In addition to Nicholson as Gladys and Cannavale as the ex-athlete, Adrien Brody is Playwright (inspired by Monroe's third husband Arthur Miller). "I love that man madly," says de Armas of Brody. The two went through some very delicate scenes together, but between takes they laughed. "Ana conveys such strength, yet she also has a vulnerable frailty and a sexual charge that makes her imbued with truth," says Brody. "She has a great wit and sense of humor. We tend to laugh a lot on set, but we both have a healthy respect for the creative process."
The actress reunited with Brody and Chris Evans, for the third time, in "Ghosted", where de Armas is also an executive producer for the film the first time. As seen in "Blonde," Marilyn Monroe has broken the contract with the studios to open her own production company and had also advocated for equal pay. Back then, those early feminists actions had gone largely unheard in Hollywood and underscored how sharp Monroe was than people recognized her. De Armas points out that Monroe wanted to be taken seriously. "She wanted to be in control of the material she was going to work on. Nobody at the time thought like that." An attitude similar to that of de Armas when it comes to his career. "I don't want to do just action movies and superhero stories," she says "I'm happy to be a part of it, but I'm also aiming for something else, films with directors like Andrew."
HAIR Jenny Cho
MAKEUP Melanie Inglessis
MANICURE Yoko Sakakura
SET DESIGN James Lear
DIGITAL TECH Mike B
PRODUCTION Ilona Klaver
PHOTO ASSISTANTS Reto Sterchi, Steve Yang, and Jacob Messex
STYLIST ASSISTANT Madeleine Kennedy
PROPS ASSISTANT Currie Ritchie
