10 Surprising Facts You Don’t Know About ‘Ballerina’ Star Ana de Armas — Like Her Go-To Comfort Food

Film femme fatale Ana de Armas puts on a killer performance as an underworld assassin in From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.

The spinoff marks her debut in the blockbuster movie franchise, which launched in 2014 with headliner Keanu Reeves. Ana, 37, calls the intense action role one of the most challenging of her career — but says it was “fun to do.”

Here are 10 things you don’t know about the native Spanish speaker.

1. She was born in Havana, Cuba, but moved to Madrid, Spain, at 18 to appear in the TV drama El Internado.

2. In 2014, she headed to Los Angeles and took four months of full-time English classes to further her career.

3. Not yet fluent in English, she learned her lines phonetically for her Hollywood debut in the 2015 thriller Knock Knock, in which she starred opposite Keanu.

4. De Armas has two pet pooches — a Maltese named Elvis and a Spanish Water Dog called Salsa.

5. Cuban cuisine is her comfort food — with one of her go-to meals being rice and beans topped with a fried egg.

6. The natural brunette didn’t dye her hair to play Marilyn Monroe in 2022’s Blonde and instead wore wigs.

7. She enjoys boxing as a workout because “there’s nothing boring about it.”

8. Ana crows that she makes “the best chicken soup in the world.”

9. Her favorite red carpet look is the tuxedo and ruffled shirt she wore for the London premiere of Knives Out.

10. She likes to meditate and explains, “When you start doing it and you’re consistent with it, you realize how much it helps with all the things that come up for you.”