{"id":428467,"date":"2025-12-06T09:10:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T09:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428467\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T09:10:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T09:10:14","slug":"ana-de-armas-opens-up-about-her-beautiful-friendship-with-keanu-reeves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428467\/","title":{"rendered":"Ana de Armas Opens Up About Her Beautiful Friendship With Keanu Reeves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAna de Armas reflected on her long friendship with Keanu Reeves and her unexpected evolution into an action star during an \u201cIn Conversation\u201d session at Saudi Arabia<\/a>\u2019s Red Sea International<\/a> Film Festival on Friday, offering an intimate, career-spanning look at her rise from Cuba to global Hollywood star.<\/p>\n

\n\tDe Armas said she and Reeves first met when she arrived in Los Angeles over a decade ago and landed her first U.S. part on Eli Roth\u2019s Knock Knock. \u201cWhen I first moved to L.A., we did Knock Knock together, and at that time I barely spoke English,\u201d she recalled. \u201cIt was kind of a frustrating journey not being able to fully communicate, but we still had a great time. We bonded really well, and we have a beautiful friendship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe described Reeves as \u201cincredibly kind and generous,\u201d suggesting that he was one of the first people to make her feel welcome in Hollywood. Reuniting with Reeves for Ballerina, the recently released John Wick spinoff, was especially meaningful: \u201cIt felt full circle. Keanu and Chad [Stahelski] have built such a beautiful world with those films, and having him there, supporting me ten years later, meant a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDiscussing her role in Ballerina, De Armas said her evolution into an action star was entirely unplanned. \u201cI never thought of myself as athletic or imagined I\u2019d do action movies,\u201d she said. \u201cIt started with No Time to Die, then The Gray Man and Ghosted, and Ballerina was another level \u2014 very challenging, very demanding. But it was also an exciting character to play, and I really loved expanding that universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress went on to describe the intense physical preparation the role required. \u201cThe training was brutal,\u201d she said. \u201cIt went on for months before shooting and continued during filming. There\u2019s no time to rehearse everything, so you\u2019re learning and adapting on the spot. It was exhausting \u2014 but I enjoyed it. I learned so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThroughout her talk, De Armas talked through the full sweep of her career, tracing it back to her childhood in Cuba, where she grew up performing with neighborhood friends. \u201cI had a very happy childhood \u2014 very free and very social,\u201d she said. \u201cWe would perform for our neighbors, do dances, and I was even in a Spice Girls group. I always knew I wanted to be an actress. There was no Plan B.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt theater school in Havana, she made her screen debut while still a student. \u201cStudents weren\u2019t supposed to work, but I auditioned and got the part,\u201d she said. \u201cI had to take a year off school, and it was hard to leave my friends, but being on set taught me more than being in class.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter saving some money from her early films, De Armas made the bold choice to move to Madrid, Spain at age 18, on her own, to chase bigger opportunities. \u201cI had saved some money from the movies I had done in Cuba \u2014 I think it was 300 euros,\u201d she recalled. \u201cAt that time, in Cuba, 300 euros was a lot of money, so I thought that was going to be sufficient. And then I arrived in Spain and realized it wasn\u2019t going to last long at all.\u201d She slept on a friend\u2019s couch for a few months until landing a role in a hit Spanish TV series, which quickly made her a household name. That success brought fame, but also frustration. \u201cBecause of that show, I was playing the same kind of young-girl roles for years,\u201d she said. \u201cI love Spanish cinema and Spanish directors, but I wasn\u2019t getting the film work I wanted. That\u2019s when I felt I had to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe took another leap by relocating to Los Angeles. \u201cI moved with three suitcases and my dog,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t speak English \u2014 zero. It was the most humbling thing I\u2019ve ever done. No one knew who I was, and my work in Spain and Cuba didn\u2019t exist there. But I decided that if I was going to make it work, I had to give it everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe felt her breakthrough truly came with Denis Villeneuve\u2019s Blade Runner 2049, which she called \u201ca dream.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWorking with Denis, Ryan [Gosling], Harrison Ford and cinematographer Roger Deakins was incredible,\u201d she said. \u201cDenis is one of my favorite directors, very thoughtful, very sensitive. The way he communicates, the way he sits down and works through every scene with his actors, makes the process so special. I felt like a kid on set again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom there came No Time to Die. \u201cThose fifteen minutes on screen changed my life,\u201d she said. \u201cCary Fukunaga called me and said, \u2018There\u2019s no script yet, but there\u2019s going to be a Cuban agent.\u2019 And I said, \u2018If there\u2019s a Cuban agent in a Bond film, it\u2019s going to be me.\u2019\u201d She added, laughing, that she had just finished filming Andrew Dominick\u2019s Blonde and carried some of her Marilyn Monroe voice into her role on the Bond film. \u201cPaloma still had a little bit of Marilyn in her \u2014 it just came out naturally,\u201d she said. \u201cIt made her even more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer portrayal of Monroe in Blonde earned her an Academy Award nomination and, she said, transformed her as an actress. \u201cIt was the most terrifying thing I\u2019ve ever done, but also the most beautiful,\u201d she explained. \u201cAndrew [Dominik] pushed me to go to places I didn\u2019t know I could go. It was nine months of research and preparation \u2014 learning Marilyn\u2019s voice, her movement, her energy. It changed the way I approach acting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNear the end of her hour-long appearance, De Armas reflected on her continuing search for challenging material \u2014 and the new kind of typecasting she now occasionally faces. She said that after years of fighting to escape predictable roles early in her career, she\u2019s aware of the risk of being pigeonholed again, this time by her recent success in action movies. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSometimes what the industry offers is not what I want to do,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s me who has to chase what\u2019s next. Sometimes I feel like people think Blonde was a fluke, that somehow I just did it. But I\u2019ve always been the one looking for what I want to do instead of waiting for what they offer. I\u2019m not here to play it safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Red Sea Film Festival<\/a> continues through to Dec. 13. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ana de Armas reflected on her long friendship with Keanu Reeves and her unexpected evolution into an action…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":428468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3774,171,1801,53,198854,199280,199281,271,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-428467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-red-sea-film-festival","13":"tag-red-sea-film-festival-2025","14":"tag-red-sea-international-film-festival","15":"tag-saudi-arabia","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115671848863222918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}