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THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS. I’M LEARNING A LOT ABOUT THE INDUSTRY TOO, AND HOW IT WORKS, AND HOW MANY PEOPLE BEHIND A PROJECT THERE ARE, AND SO MANY OPINIONS.
DID THAT DREAM SEEM REAL BACK THEN? WERE YOU THINKING, ‘I CAN DO THIS, I CAN BE IN THE MOVIES’? WAS IT THAT REAL TO YOU, OR DID THAT TAKE A WHILE? Yeah. It was real. I knew that was what I was going to do. I knew it. I couldn’t dream of anything else outside Cuba, ever. First, because you grow up thinking that, it’s good enough. That’s all you need. Which in some ways is true. You can dream very high there, but very few people dream that they can really go outside and have, I don’t know, the balls to make that dream happen. I always knew that’s what I wanted to do. But never this far.
SO YOU WERE 18 WHEN YOU LEFT CUBA? Yeah.
SO YOU HAD THE BALLS TO DO IT. WHEN DID THAT COME ABOUT, THAT OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU TO SAY, ‘I’M GOING TO GO MAKE MOVIES’?
SO ANA, TELL US ABOUT WHERE THIS ALL STARTED, THIS DESIRE TO DO WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING. WERE YOU A LITTLE GIRL? I was very young. I don’t really remember a specific day or moment that I said, I’m going to be an actress. I remember I would watch movies on the couch in my house. If I saw a scene played by a woman or a man, doesn’t matter, a scene that I really liked, I would just right away run to the mirror and repeat it and do it again. Or in my home, we never had videos, like video players, or DVDs, or VHS, none of that. I remember a neighbour had, a friend of mine. We used to watch movies together. Then when I would come back home, I would do the movie for my brother, because he didn’t see it. So those little things, it was always what I wanted to do. I was 12 or 13 when I decided that’s what I want to do. When we moved to Havana when I was like nine, we still had that small town mentality. We never went out of our neighbourhood. My school was one block away, so I was going back and forth from the school. The world, the city was so big but we didn’t know. Then one day I heard there was a theatre school. I had no clue. That was the day I said, ‘Oh, if there is a school, then that’s what I want to do, where I want to go’. And I made my parents take me for the auditions. That’s how it started.
I had the balls and a Spanish passport. My first three movies were when I was in those four years of drama school, I started doing my first movie when I was in the second year. It was a co-production with Spain. Spanish movies happened a lot in Cuba. That’s where the money most of the time come from, from Spain. So my first three movies were actually three co-productions with Spain. And because when I was little, my grandparents were from Spain, that was always in the conversation, and I always saw my little red passport in the drawer, but I never used it. So when I was 18 and I graduated from school, it just came to my mind. I want to go to Spain and just try. Audition for something and see what happens. That’s it. So I bought a ticket, and I told my mom, ‘When I run out of money, I’ll come back.’ And at that time I was saving money from those three movies, and I had 200 Euros saved. And I left. I went to Spain with 200 Euros in my pocket. I was lucky enough. I met a big casting director a week after I got there. He cast me for one of the biggest TV series ever made in Spain. And I never came back, because I started shooting, and it was like a 360 degrees change in my life. Yeah, that’s how it started.
WHAT DID YOU LOVE ABOUT BEING IN SPAIN, LIVING THERE? THAT BIG STEP OUT OF THE NEST. I loved being independent for real, like finally. To me, my family means everything. I have a very small family and I’m very close to all of them, and I always dream with a big family. They’re everything. But at the same time, I like to do my thing alone. And in Spain, I had that freedom. I was by myself. In Cuba, you really grow very fast, emotionally and mentally, and physically, everything happens very fast. You’re an adult way sooner than probably in any other country. So that was the only thing that I was missing. I was already a woman, but still in my parents’ house. Not having, obviously, the opportunity to be independent with 200 Euros. So when I moved to Spain, that was a great feeling. Finally, I am really a woman, and I always wanted to take care of my family and that made it possible.
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
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CE L EBRIT Y INTERVI EW ANA DE ARMAS
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