While Ana de Armas works in front of the camera, that doesn't mean she's comfortable living life in the public eye.
This was especially true when it came to the media frenzy around her relationship with Ben Affleck. While the two dated for less than a year in 2020, they were frequently photographed by the paparazzi and everything from their afternoon strolls to their vacations made headlines.
So, what was it like to have this level of attention on their romance? "Horrible," de Armas told ELLE in an interview for its August 2022 cover story. However, she's able to see a silver lining. "Yeah, which is good," the actress continued. "That's one of the reasons why I left L.A."
While de Armas had seen other celebrities face public scrutiny, experiencing it firsthand made her realize that the City of Angels wasn't exactly heaven on earth for her.
"Going through it [myself] confirmed my thoughts about, 'This is not the place for me to be,'" The Gray Man star continued. "It became a little bit too much. There's no escape. There's no way out."
As de Armas, who now lives in New York, put it, in L.A., "It's always the feeling of something that you don't have, something missing. It's a city that keeps you anxious."
Affleck and de Armas, who starred together in the movie Deep Water, sparked romance rumors in March 2020 after they were spotted visiting Havana, Cuba, where she was born. After a trip to Costa Rica and quarantining together in Los Angeles amid the pandemic, the two made their relationship Instagram official that April.
Over the next few months, fans watched them spend birthdays and Thanksgiving together and even appear in a PDA-packed music video. But in January 2021, a source confirmed to E! News that de Armas and Affleck split. At the time, an insider close to Affleck said the duo "started having problems in the fall" and noted they were just in "different places" in life.
However, they have both found love again. Affleck is now engaged to Jennifer Lopez, rekindling their romance from the early aughts, and de Armas is dating Paul Boukadakis. According to ELLE, the Knives Out star and the Tinder executive were introduced through a mutual friend during the pandemic and had their first few dates at their homes talking and drinking wine.
Still, de Armas is keeping her personal life private, telling the magazine she doesn't Google herself and stays off social media.
"I deleted Twitter years ago," she said. "I have barely been on Instagram for almost a year."