Rolling off a banner world premiere of Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde” at the Venice Film Festival, Ana de Armas’s next stop was the Deauville Film Festival in France where she received the Hollywood Rising-Star Award on Friday (Sept. 9) in the jam-packed Palais des Congres.
Attended by Dominik and the film’s producers, the ceremony was followed by the French premiere of the Netflix movie, in which de Armas delivers a riveting performance as Marilyn Monroe.
De Armas, who notably starred in “Knives Out,” “No Time to Die” and “Grey Man,” succeeds Dylan Penn, Sophie Turner, Elle Fanning and Shailene Woodley as recent recipients of the Hollywood Rising Star Award.
Dressed in a long white dress with golden ornaments, the Cuban-born actor said she “grew up with very little but had a grandfather who was a cinephile.”
“I was about 10 years old when almost every night my grandfather and I would sit on the couch and watch whatever movie was playing on TV. It didn’t matter if I had to go to school early the next morning. When the news was over and the telenovela was over and after everyone else had gone to sleep, we would sit in the dark living room, turn the volume down and with him by my side, I’d enjoy every single minute, learning and discussing with him about all these places and people in worlds that were very different from mine,” de Armas said on stage.
“These films led me to have big dreams,” she continued. De Armas, also paid tribute to her “very loving parents” who “supported those big dreams, [her] passion, [her] conviction and [her] ambition to pursue this career.”
She said her parents championed her every step of the way, starting when she was 13 and told them she “wanted to be an actress.” At 16 she told them she wanted to study drama and by 18 and starred in her first movie. She said they were also supportive later when she told them she wanted to move to Spain to advance her career.
“Even though they didn’t know much about the industry of the world outside Cuba, they knew that love meant to support and trust me and they did every step of the way,” de Armas said.
She ended her acceptance speech by saying that she was thinking of “every person who’s given [her] an opportunity to be creative and to speak [her] mind.”
The Deauville Film Festival is wrapping this evening (Sept. 10) with the French premiere of Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” following the awards ceremony. The jury of this year’s edition is presided over by renowned French director Arnaud Desplechin.
