The TV show that taught Ana de Armas how to speak English: “The best tutor”

Posted On January 17, 2026January 17, 2026

Aside from the obvious leg up that being spectacularly beautiful has given her, the ascent of Ana de Armas is really quite impressive, especially when you consider that at several stages of her career her plan to navigate Hollywood essentially came down to ‘fake it ‘til you make it’.

Cuban-born de Armas barely spoke English when she first landed in the US to pursue a film career in 2014, and spent several auditions reciting lines of dialogue that could have meant anything, enrolling in school to try to learn the language as fast as possible.

When she did land a fairly major role alongside Keanu Reeves in the following year’s thriller Knock Knock, she needed to learn her lines phonetically, leading unsurprisingly to reviews of her performance in the film that described her as ‘unconvincing’. Nevertheless, she continued to plough on, despite again having to go phonetic in order to play her part with Jonah Hill in the comedy War Dogs in 2016. 

The makers of the movie had no idea of her method and were astonished to find, while shooting, that when a line in the script was changed, de Armas wasn’t able to pronounce it and couldn’t understand the context behind it. But again, it didn’t dent her prospects, and she came to prominence with her role as the uber-sexy hologram in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049.

Despite acclaim for her work on the film, though, it underperformed, and she spent some time back in Cuba, taking on a role in her native tongue, and then when she filmed scenes for Danny Boyle’s Beatles-inspired film Yesterday, they were cut. The role that changed everything for de Armas was undoubtedly in Rian Johnson’s stylish whodunnit Knives Out in 2019, when she stole the film and was nominated for a Golden Globe award for ‘Best Actress’.

Since then, she has gone A-list thanks to a series of superb performances, often as an action heroine, eventually being given her own film to carry in the form of John Wick spin-off Ballerina and a (admittedly panned) Marilyn Monroe biopic, Blonde.

So how did she go from non-English speaker to Hollywood treasure and Golden Globe winner? Why, by doing what we all do, of course, sitting and binging a show on Netflix until the wee small hours.

She explained to EW: “I was born in Cuba, came to America when I was 26, and I learned English the way everyone who comes to this country does: by watching Friends. Who would have thought that the best English tutor would be Chandler Bing? I mean, look at me now. Could I be any better at English?”

De Armas now has plenty more projects on the way, including a rumoured role alongside One Battle After Another star Benicio del Toro and Cameron Diaz on Reenactment, directed by music video maestro Grant Singer. Plot details are being kept closely under wraps at the moment, but del Toro already partnered with Singer on 2023’s thriller Reptile.

De Armas is also likely to line up opposite another South American import in the shape of Oscar Isaac on the intriguingly named TV series Bananas, which is being developed by Apple TV. The success of Ballerina means another appearance as the deadly assassin Eve Macarro is also on the cards.

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