Meeting Ana De Armas On The Knives Out Set Was An Awkward Encounter For Jamie Lee Curtis

There are many reasons why you might know Ana de Armas. The actress has made headlines over the last few years for all sorts of reasons — alongside the pandemic, Hollywood gossip fans will remember 2020 as the year of BenAna, the fleeting romance between de Armas and Ben Affleck that ended with the unceremonious tossing into a dumpster of a life-size cardboard cutout of the actress — but she is perhaps most well known for her role as the unassuming Marta Cabrera in Rian Johnson's 2019 murder mystery hit, "Knives Out." 

However, prior to charming us as the shy nurse who ends up inheriting an entire fortune, de Armas was busy building a name for herself in other films. Fans may have first seen her in the 2015 psychological horror remake "Knock Knock," which stars Keanu Reeves as a man who is held captive by two women who have made a hobby out of seducing happily married men and needlessly ruining their lives. Since then, she has also made appearances in films like "War Dogs," "No Time to Die," and "Blade Runner 2049" where she plays the memorably romantic A.I. girlfriend of K (Ryan Gosling). 

Recently, de Armas returned to the screen alongside Gosling for the Netflix film "The Gray Man," as well as starring in Andrew Dominik's "Blonde" as Marilyn Monroe, an almost untouchable role that no doubt proves her star is definitely on the rise. However, "Knives Out" will always be her big break, especially since the movie placed her amongst some of the biggest names in the biz — Daniel Craig, Toni Collette, Chris Evans, and Christopher Plummer among them. But even though the movie helped bring her into the mainstream, this was not her first foray into the world of film, a crucial fact that another big actress on set was not aware of.

While it is true that Ana de Armas is Cuban-born, she has been working in Hollywood for quite some time. However, de Armas' credentials as an actress were unbeknownst to Jamie Lee Curtis when they first met. In a profile on de Armas for Elle magazine, Curtis told the story of the first time the two met. She says, "I assumed — and I say this with real embarrassment —because she had come from Cuba, that she had just arrived. I made an assumption that she was an inexperienced, unsophisticated young woman." Curtis explains that she asked de Armas to tell her what her dreams were, thinking that she might be able to help the young actress on her journey to success. However, she quickly realized de Armas was not new to the business by any means, and Curtis' false judgment was revealed. 

While Curtis' mistake definitely has some pretty bad vibes — in America, many people of color have a long history of being asked where they are really from — she is quick to shower de Armas with praise, as well as admit to her mistake. "She is not as fancy as maybe the advertisements would have you believe. She leans in, interested; talking to her is kind of give-and-take. She's curious and asks a lot of questions," Curtis explains. However, in a bizarre twist of fate, art seems to have imitated life on the set of "Knives Out" in the sense that de Armas and her power were underestimated both on screen and off.