How Ana De Armas is Changing the Game for Latinas Actresses Everywhere

Ana de Armas is in a league of her own.

The Cuban-born actress has recently graced the screen with her performances in Deep Water, No Time to Die and her much-anticipated roles in The Gray Man and Blonde.

De Armas, who was born in Santa Cruz del Norte in Cuba, has been an enigma both in Hollywood and across the globe as her versatility as an actress, producer and model has taken her from Cuba to Spain to Los Angeles—changing the way in which Latina actresses are perceived.

"I do want to play Latina. But I don't want to put a basket of fruit on my head every single time," she said in a recent interview with Elle. "So that's my hope, that I can show that we can do anything if we're given the time to prepare, and if we're given just the chance, just the chance."

For De Armas, expanding roles for Latinas means going beyond their ethnicity as the defining aspect of their character.

"You can do any film—Blonde—you can do anything," she added. "The problem is that sometimes you don't even get to the room with the director to sit down and prove yourself. It is both exhausting and frustrating."

The 34-year-old actress started her acting career at an early age in Havana, when she enrolled at a drama school at the age of 14. Before leaving the Caribbean island at 18, she did three Cuban films. Then, she settled in Madrid, where she became famous for her television roles on popular shows such as El Internado.

De Armas had grander ambitions and set her eyes on Hollywood, moving to Los Angeles where she would have to start over and face the reality of being a Spanish-speaking actress with an accent and having her work be tossed aside by casting directors.

After an intense couple of years in the city of angels and post-break-up drama with Ben Affleck, she decided to leave L.A. and move to New York, where she lives with her boyfriend, Paul Boukadakis and two dogs, Salsa and Elvis.

"Going through it [myself] confirmed my thoughts about, 'This is not the place for me to be,'" she admitted to the magazine. "It became a little bit too much. There's no escape. There's no way out. It's always the feeling of something that you don't have, something missing. It's a city that keeps you anxious."

Although she has now found a home for herself, she still feels like an outsider in her artistic crowds, taking everyone she meets by surprise.

"I feel sometimes that I'm not part of the Cuban artist community, and then I was in Spain and I feel like I'm not part of the community there—especially because in Spain, I did more TV than movies," she explained. "And then I'm here, and I feel like I'm not there yet either. You know? Am I part of the community? I barely know anybody."

Co-star Jamie Lee Curtis admitted feeling embarrassed after assuming De Armas had just arrived from Cuba and didn't know anybody in Hollywood.

"I assumed—and I say this with real embarrassment—because she had come from Cuba, that she had just arrived," Curtis told Elle. "I made an assumption that she was an inexperienced, unsophisticated young woman. That first day, I was like, 'Oh, what are your dreams?'"

Regarding the future of The Gray Man actress, she is looking to direct more films written by women and work on films with directors she likes. For now, she is glad to see a Latina actor with a Cuban accent cast in a film like Blonde, a sign that Hollywood's mind may be opening up.

"It's definitely changing; it's getting better. But it's hard to know now, being in my position, because I know it's not the same for everybody," De Armas said. "And I feel like it's coming from filmmakers, that diversity has become a must. You have to do the right thing. Thank God."