Ana de Armas talks about being back on screen with Keanu Reeves after 10 years
Ana de Armas, starring in Ballerina with Keanu Reeves, looks back on her meteoric rise to fame since they co-starred in Knock Knock in 2015
Years before Ana de Armas was using an ice skate to slice a neck in From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, she co-starred with Keanu Reeves in a very different film.
The erotic thriller Knock Knock, released in 2015, was de Armas’ first Hollywood film. De Armas, born and raised in Cuba, had just come to Los Angeles after acting in Spain. English was new to her, so she had to learn her lines phonetically.
“It was tough and I felt miserable at times and very lonely,” she says in an interview. “But I wanted to prove myself. I remember being in meetings with producers and they would be like, ‘OK, I’ll see you in a year when you learn English’. Before I left the office, I would say, ‘I’ll see you in two months’.”
In Ballerina, which opened in cinemas on June 6, de Armas’ progressive development as an unlikely action star reaches a butt-kicking crescendo, inheriting the mantle of one of the most esteemed high-body-count franchises.