Ana de Armas and the “dream come true” that convinced her she was an actor
There are some actors who work for many years before they feel accomplished, even if they have done work that has been commendable, such as Ana de Armas, who got her big break in English-language cinema thanks to Keanu Reeves, who co-starred with her in the dark comedy Knock Knock and the legal thriller Exposed.
Subsequently, she got the opportunity to show her dramatic chops as an actor when she was cast to play Felicidad Iglesias in Hands of Stone, a biopic in which Edgar Ramirez portrayed the legendary boxer Roberto Duran.
Ramirez’s transformation into Duran was an impressive one, and the Venezuelan filmmaker Jonathan Jakubowicz worked to craft an intimate study of his marriage with Iglesias, which proved to be quite tempestuous. However, the film got a real boost of star power because of Robert De Niro co-starring as the legendary boxing trainer Ray Arcel, who had become world-renowned because he trained many of the greatest heavyweight champions of all time.
De Niro’s involvement in the film was a two-fold homage to his own legacy, as he had famously won the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ for his performance in the boxing biopic Raging Bull, for which he gained a significant amount of weight to convincingly play Jake LaMotta. Hands of Stone also alluded to Arcel’s involvement with the mafia, which plays upon the actor’s history of making many crime classics with Martin Scorsese.
There’s no lick of doubt that De Niro is legendary, and his co-star de Armas was positively star-struck. Working since her adolescence in her home country of Cuba, she was always interested in being in the type of American films that she had always idolised, naming The Deer Hunter, which De Niro had starred in, as one of her favourite films, so naturally, working with one of her heroes was an exhilarating experience.
“It was a dream come true,” de Armas gushed, “I was enjoying myself and, at the same time, trying to look at myself from the outside like, ‘Are you really getting to do this?’”
Hands of Stone is the rare film that follows all the clichés of a standard biopic, but still ends up being impressive because of how strong the performances are. While traditionally the roles of the wife and the trainer in a boxing movie can feel like caricatures, de Armas and De Niro gave such great performances that they were able to elevate the mediocre script.
The film may not have been a runaway success, but it did prove that de Armas was a bankable star in English-language films, which is why, the same summer she co-starred in the black comedy War Dogs, alongside Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, and Bradley Cooper, which was also ironically indebted to a different De Niro movie, as director Todd Phillips had frequently spoken about his love of Scorsese, and named Goodfellas as a major inspiration.
De Armas might have actually ended up doing De Niro a favour, as Hands of Stone offered him one of his best roles in years. Although it briefly seemed like he didn’t have any more great performances in him, he responded with some career-defining work in The Irishman, Joker, and Killers of the Flower Moon as follow-ups.
