Cuban actress Ana de Armas nominated for Oscar for Blonde

January 24, 2023

Cuban Ana de Armas appears on the list of nominations for the 2023 Oscar award for her performance in the film Blonde, reported the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of the United States.

De Armas, the first Cuban in history nominated for this award, competes in the best leading actress category with Cate Blanchett (TÁR), Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie), Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Michelle Williams (The Fabelmans).

With her interpretation of the Hollywood icon represented by Marilyn Monroe, the 34-year-old woman born on the Caribbean island also earned a nomination for the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild awards and more recently the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards.

Her embodiment of this myth of North American culture earned her important assessments from critics and personalities from the film world.

"I think it's phenomenal," said American actor Brad Pitt about her performance to Entertainment Weekly magazine, who is also an executive producer of the film.

Regarding the complexity of the character that Ana plays, he stated that "hers is a very difficult dress to wear."

He recalled that the project had been in development for 10 years. "It was impossible for us to reach the finish line until we found Ana," the artist assured, another of Hollywood's stars.

For Cuban critic Joel del Río, the best trump card of the work is its lead actress: "Ana de Armas is immense in her ability to move from imitation to the visceral, from facial rictus to work with diction, and from there to the contortions of the spirit, all of it with absolute fluidity and astonishing skill," he wrote in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

He noted that regardless of whether she is nominated, awarded or not, "more than a star has been born, a great actress whose brilliance I had difficulty perceiving at first, but whom I now recognize with all the frankness that comes with knowing oneself to be mistaken and even publishing the error."

"I save for last what is really the beginning, the best that, in my opinion, Blonde has: the performance of its lead actress. It is a marvel to delight in her expressions, voice and movements so distant from the Latina that they are, so close to the Hollywood diva she portrays," noted journalist Susana Besteiro in the Cuban newspaper Granma.

De Armas managed to transform herself not only into the different characters played by the American actress, but also exceptionally assumed her existential challenges and personal conflicts, as well as the personal problems she had to face during her existence.

Her filmography includes roles in about 30 films, among them Knives Out, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe for best female supporting performance; as well as the blockbusters Blade Runner 2049, No Time to Die and The Gray Man, among others.