Do we like Ana de Armas?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful or nasty turned up, but there's little documented advocacy to push it higher.
Ana de Armas grew up in Cuba and has described a happy, free childhood, performing for the neighbours. She got into Cuba's National Theatre School and landed her first film role in her second year. At 18 she moved to Madrid with 300 euros saved from her Cuban films and spent months on a friend's couch.
The Hollywood leap was just as scrappy. After an audition for a film about a Cuban boxer, she says she sold her furniture, gave up her flat and moved to Los Angeles with three suitcases and her dog. She didn't speak English then and spent her first months in language school, which is a proper underdog arc.
The harm check came up clean. We found no statements from her against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no record of her backing anyone who does. When she promoted Blonde, she said playing Marilyn Monroe was an honour, including as part of Monroe's legacy as an LGBTQ+ icon, according to Yahoo's write-up.
The scandal shelf is nearly bare, and most of it isn't hers. A Cuban exile alleged in a 2020 suit that Netflix's Wasp Network portrayed her unfairly, and objected to de Armas's character. Netflix hadn't commented, and the report doesn't say de Armas was a defendant. Separately, Jamie Lee Curtis copped backlash in 2022 for saying she'd assumed de Armas was unsophisticated because she was from Cuba; no response from de Armas was reported.
Nothing new on her lately that we could verify from solid sources. Trade chatter points to a spy thriller with Sebastian Stan and a fitness-influencer thriller, but we haven't confirmed details. Gossip about her love life is tabloid territory and not our business.
The good stuff is mostly the work and the story: a first Cuban actor to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, for Blonde. Charity claims floating around online come from content-farm pages, so we've left them out. That's honestly the whole list.