The Unlikely Journey of Ana de Armas

Αna de Armas, the radiant summer's blockbuster the cuban-born star of The Gray Man. Is complex. Contemplative... And extremely grateful to have escaped L.A.

- By Marisa Meltzer

Ana de Armas is relieved the past couple of years are behind her. "It was weird," she says. Her father was sick with a non-COVID illness and she wanted to go back to Cuba, where she's from, but the island was closed for travel during the pandemic. "And then at the same time, I was working a lot, and I felt very lucky" She shot The Gray Man, the summer action movie directed by Anthony and Joe Russo and costarring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, reportedly the biggest-budget film Netflix has ever made.

Well, and there was a lot of attention focused on her for a widely photographed and gossiped-about relationship with Ben Affleck. How was that, I had to ask. "Horrible," she says, nodding and opening her big, round hazel eyes for emphasis. Really? "Yeah, which is good," she says. "That's one of the reasons why I left L.A."

She had spent seven years in Los Angeles, seeing other performers' lives become a fishbowl complete with paparazzi tracking your every move. "Going through it [myself] confirmed my thoughts about, 'This is not the place for me to be," she says. "It became a little bit too much. There's no escape. There's no way out." In Los Angeles, she adds, "it's always the feeling of something that you don't have, something missing. It's a city that keeps you anxious."