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."

She lives in New York now, in an apartment with her boyfriend, Tinder exec Paul Boukadakis, and has met me at the Ladurée garden in SoHo, where she's drinking jasmine tea and sitting with her back to the crowds. The two met during the pandemic through a mutual friend and, with a lot of places closed, spent their first dates at each other's homes, drinking wine and talking.