Ana de Arma becomes first actress to win Action Star of the Year award

April 5, 2025

Cuban actress Ana de Armas received the Action Star of the Year award from CinemaCon 2025, making her the first woman to achieve the distinction.

The award is given by the annual convention of the same name, which brings together cinema owners from around the world and is considered the largest gathering of its kind in the film industry, according to Prensa Latina news agency.

Nominated for an Oscar in 2023 for her Marilyn Monroe in Blonde and with the anticipation of Ballerina, which hits U.S. screens on June 6, de Armas captured the spotlight at center stage in the Coliseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Keanu Reeves, a key actor in her life on film sets
In her acceptance remarks, she acknowledged the support provided by another action cinema star: Keanu Reeves, whom she met a decade ago "when I barely spoke English when I moved to Los Angeles," she confessed while recalling the story of her relationship with the 60-year-old Canadian star, with whom she reappears in Ballerina, a thriller directed by Len Wiseman (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard, and Total Recall).

At her first encounter with Reeves, when the actress was preparing for her debut in Knock Knock, a film that would mark a turning point in her career, she did not understand Reeves' question in English about whether she had seen the film The Matrix.

Not understanding the reference well, the actress simply said no. "The reaction was immediate. Everyone looked at me with a surprised face. It was one of those awkward silences that last a second, but feel eternal," she recalled with laughter. It wasn't until someone translated it to Spanish that she understood her mistake "I will never stop being embarrassed about it," she told the Spanish edition of Harper's Bazaar magazine.

Ballerina, action in abundance
About Ballerina, the upcoming spin-off (sequel) of the John Wick franchise, the actress, who also holds Spanish nationality, commented to the American weekly magazine dedicated to film and popular culture, Variety, that her preparation and filming schedule were relentless, and that trainers prioritized calorie cycling and recovery.

"When you train at this level, everything is important: diet, sleep, massages, physical therapy. If you don't recover well, you're lost. The intensity is very demanding," said de Armas, born in 1988 in Havana and whose career on film sets began in that city at age 16 with the Spanish-Cuban romantic drama A Rose from France (2006), directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón.

Ballerina, whose new trailer was released on March 19, also stars Reeves, Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, and Anjelica Huston.

The actress has already clarified that her character is not simply a female John Wick, but rather offers a fresh and different perspective of the fictional universe of the films starring Keanu Reeves.

In statements cited by the portal Acción, De Armas said that there are distinctive characteristics in the style of developing the fights in John Wick and things that Reeves does that are defining of the character, but that Ballerina is told from Eve's eyes and focuses on showing how her training and John's training went, how they became assassins, and although there are things they share, Eve Macarro is Eve Macarro, not John Wick.

According to the PL report, for specialized critics, 2025 will be a key year in the actress's career, given that in addition to her highly anticipated Ballerina she will be part of the cast of Eden, an existential drama directed by Ron Howard, Oscar winner in 2001 for Best Director and Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind.

Both films will have just two months between them in movie theaters, where viewers will have the opportunity to appreciate the caliber of this Ana with weapons of versatility, capable of moving between frantic action and raw introspection with the same intensity, PL considered.