ANA DE ARMAS WILL REALLY SHOW US WHAT SHE CAN DO
THE FILM’S BLONDE…
Still excited about the next big biopic trailer? Aw, how 2014. These days, the huge moment in a release cycle is when the first promo pic drops, and you can see how much the lead actor looks like the person they’re playing. Remember when that image of Lily James and Sebastian Stan as Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee landed? Bedlam. Ken Branagh as Boris (in the forthcoming Michael Winterbottom Sky Atlantic mini-series This England)? Bonkers. It happened when Netflix released pictures of Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s upcoming biopic Blonde, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ book of the same name. Magnificent.
As well as doing the big reveal of de Armas as Monroe — and the similarity is eerie — Blonde is the big reveal of Ana de Armas as Ana de Armas. This is her coming-out party. Knives Out was when your dad took notice of her, but there she was squished between Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc on one side and much of Hollywood on the other. Outside of that, she’s been squeezing onto the edges of things. She turned up for the best 15 minutes of No Time to Die, shimmered briefly as Ryan Gosling’s AI girlfriend in Blade Runner 2049 and got cut from Danny Boyle’s Beatles-free Beatles fantasy Yesterday. Cruellest of all, her cardboard likeness was dumped in a bin outside Ben Affleck’s house.
Now, finally, the 34-year-old Cuban actress has got the kind of meaty gig she deserves — in a film that looks set to be both iconic and deeply unsettling. Also, let it be said, playing a real-life icon in a Golden-Age Hollywood story is usually catnip come the Oscars. Blonde ambition and then some. tn