Ana de Armas has developed a reputation in Hollywood for taking on raunchy roles.
WITH her emerald eyes, blonde hair and olive skin, Ana de Armas looks set to be one of the sexiest Bond girls so far.
And in news that might chill the spine of 007 actor Daniel Craig’s wife Rachel Weisz, the beautiful Cuban actress says she has a habit of falling for her co-stars.
Ana, 31, was 16 when she made her first film.
She admits: “I fell in love with several people. Now during filming I already know that’s what’s going to happen.
“But I’m conscious it’s a bubble that you’re wrapped in for just two months.”
In the space of a few years Ana has developed a reputation in Hollywood for taking on raunchy roles and stripping off in front of her co-stars.
Ana's pose in 2016's Hands of Stone mirrors that of Bond girl Shirley Eaton in 1964’s Goldfinger
She appeared naked in 2017 hit Blade Runner 2049, 2011’s Blind Alley and 2009’s Sex, Party And Lies.
Her breakout performance was with Keanu Reeves in 2015 erotic horror thriller Knock Knock, about a married man who is seduced by two girls who trick their way into his home. The ensuing threesome scene that Ana does with Keanu and co-star Lorenza Izzo is so raunchy it is on porn sites.
Now Ana will be the 76th Bond girl in one of the most talked-about instalments of the 007 series.
And The Sun on Sunday can reveal that her life story reads much like the script for one of the thrillers in which she has starred.
'I'VE ALWAYS BEEN VERY AMBITIOUS'
Growing up in communist Cuba’s capital, Havana, she wasn’t even able to see a Bond movie as a child, let alone hope of becoming a Bond girl.
But she dreamed of being an actress from the age of 12 and after four years at the National Theatre School of Havana, she decided to flee the brutal regime run by firebrand dictator Fidel Castro.
She was 18 and decided to use her heritage — she has Spanish grandparents — to apply for a Spanish passport and move to Madrid with all her savings: 200 euros, worth about £170.
Ana said: “I felt like I wanted more. I’ve always been very ambitious and I always knew I wanted something else.
“Of course, I didn’t know that 200 euros was nothing, because in Cuba it was a lot. It was what I had been saving from work as an actress.
“I told my parents that I’d be back when the money ran out. Of course that didn’t happen — my money ran out in a week and I didn’t go back. It was the best decision I ever made.”
In Spain, Ana is a huge celebrity thanks to her role in TV thriller series El Internado — a part she auditioned for a week after arriving in Madrid in 2006.
Fame brought with it riches she could never have imagined during her childhood in Havana, where her parents were university lecturers and where food shortages were common after Castro came to power in 1959.
Ana said: “I come from a modest family. We lived without luxuries, with the basics, just enough to eat every day and go to the beach some summers.
“Thanks to my parents’ honesty, I was always conscious of what we could and couldn’t have. My brother and I would go out into the street to play.
“We didn’t have phones or internet or even DVD players. Anything.”
Ana was a few months from graduating from her drama course when she made the decision to flee Cuba.
'I ALWAYS PAY ATTENTION TO MY INTUITION'
This was because under communist rules she would have had to take a menial job to pay for her education as part of “national social service”.
She said: “I had to weigh the value of having a degree in my hands or leaving at that moment in search of my future.
“I always pay attention to my intuition — so I left.
“I left to try my luck. It could have turned out for the good or for the bad. I was gambling everything, but it was a risk I needed to take.
“I had there, in front of my eyes, former students of the school, graduates who were not working or who didn’t have any money because they had to perform social service.
“I would turn on the television there and see nothing more than old reruns of soap operas or things produced by the (state broadcaster) Cuban Institute of Radio and Television that were of poor quality, due to the low budgets.”
In Madrid her life was suddenly transformed in many little ways.
Ana said: “Growing up, I didn’t have sweets, so when I got to Spain I got obsessed with buying them, and ice cream and doughnuts. I had to stop at some point.
“I was also obsessed with canned food. I was opening tins of sweetcorn and so on and it was amazing to me because you did not have to cook it.”
And she also got to see her first James Bond film.
She revealed: “I have been a fan of Bond films for a few years and have a few special memories of Skyfall.
“It was the first Bond film I saw on the big screen when it premiered in Madrid.”
Meanwhile, she fell in love with Spanish actor and model Marc Clotet, 39, and they married in 2011.
Marc’s friends later claimed Ana had a fiery temper and would often get into a strop.
The couple separated two years later and in 2014 she fled again — this time to Los Angeles, despite speaking no English.
She said: “I came with a pretty simple plan, a suitcase and the idea that if I had to stay I’d stay, and if I had to go I’d go.
'I AM THE LAZIEST PERSON ON THE PLANET'
“I told my team, ‘I don’t want to audition for Maria or Juana. I want to audition for whatever everyone else is auditioning for’.
“Everyone deserves the opportunity to fight for the part they want.”
Today Ana lives in LA’s Venice Beach with dog Elvis, and claims to spend most of her time lounging around at home.
She said: “I’m the laziest person on the planet. I’m happy just drinking wine and watching movies on my couch.
“I just show up to the gym because I know someone is waiting for me.”
She and Daniel Craig already know each other from working on the forthcoming thriller Knives Out, an American crime drama in which she plays a nurse and he is a detective.
They were together again last week for the launch of the as yet untitled 25th Bond film in Jamaica.
Ana will play Paloma, the latest in a long line of glam Bond girls.
Her predecessors might have been given such shockingly un-PC names as Chew Mee, Honey Ryder and Pussy Galore, but things are changing.
Ana and a team of women — including Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who is working on the script — look set to transform Bond into a #MeToo feminist icon.
Producer Barbara Broccoli has declared 007’s attitudes to women will move with the times, and referred to the upcoming film’s stars — Ana and British actress Lashana Lynch — as Bond women, rather than girls.
Barbara added that they were not playing “objects” but would be “interesting and competitive women”