Ana De Armas Says She Hated The Attention She Got With Ben Affleck So Much That She Moved Out Of Los Angeles
At the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine, Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, who seemed to say, “Fuck it – there isn’t a red carpet in sight, so let’s make our own!” by getting photographed almost daily in a variety of monotonous ways, like walking dogs, walking with coffee, or just walking to front doors. Hey, it was barely entertainment, but we took what we could get. As it turns out, Ana wasn’t hitting the streets every day for our benefit. In fact, she is now saying that absolutely hated all the attention she and Ben got when they went outside, to the point that it made her pack up and move away from Los Angeles.
BenAna was together for almost a year when they broke up in January 2021. It was said that Ben and Ana decided to call it quits because they were in “different places.” That could have been meant as a metaphor, but based on a new interview Ana has given to ELLE Magazine, it could also have been a literal interpretation of the situation. Ana was in a different place, and didn’t want to be in LA, where Ben was. Ana is from Cuba, and she had a difficult time returning home in the beginning of the COVID pandemic, because Cuba was closed to outside visitors. When Cuba finally opened back up, Ana hopped a plane and was very happy to return home. When it was time to leave Cuba and go back to the United States for work, Ana didn’t find herself making like 2009 Miley Cyrus and hopping off a plane at LAX. And Ana claims she didn’t miss it because of the pap attention. via ELLE:
There was a lot of attention focused on her for a widely photographed and gossiped-about relationship with Ben Affleck. How was that, I had to ask. “Horrible,” she says, nodding and opening her big, round hazel eyes for emphasis. Really? “Yeah, which is good,” she says. “That’s one of the reasons why I left L.A.”
She had spent seven years in Los Angeles, seeing other performers’ lives become a fishbowl complete with paparazzi tracking your every move. “Going through it [myself] confirmed my thoughts about, ‘This is not the place for me to be,’” she says. “It became a little bit too much. There’s no escape. There’s no way out.” In Los Angeles, she adds, “it’s always the feeling of something that you don’t have, something missing. It’s a city that keeps you anxious.”
Ana currently lives in New York City with her Tinder executive boyfriend of a little over a year, Paul Boukadakis. But clearly, Ana is living a much more low-key life, considering there aren’t daily pictures of her and Paul strolling around Manhattan, clutching iced coffees, or moving life-sized cardboard cut-outs of themselves in and out of their apartment building.
Of course, most people are probably looking at Ana and thinking, “Her? Hated the attention?” Because a TikTok user accused Ana of calling the paparazzi on herself, to photograph her and Ben walking verrrrry slowly. But I will say, my heart goes out to Ben Affleck upon hearing Ana’s comments. Because Ana looked like she was having a good time when she was photographed walking the streets with Ben and a variety of accessories ranging from dogs to coffees. But Ben? I know he was loving it. What’s better than some fresh air, a babe on your arm, and a partially melted Dunkin iced coffee? Poor Ben. Thankfully he’s got Jennifer Lopez in his life. She’d never shit talk the attention they get from photographers! In fact, I bet she’s about to cheer him up right now with an iced coffee and six to ten cameras clicking away in the parking lot of wherever Ben buys his 2.5 gallon soda machine refills.
Here’s more of Ana in ELLE:
Pic: INSTARimages