Ana de Armas says high-profile romance with Ben Affleck made her leave LA: ‘Horrible’

Ana de Armas has revealed that her relationship with Ben Affleck, which drew huge amounts of media attention, forced her to leave Los Angeles.

The Knives Out star dated Affleck for almost a year until they split up in January 2021.

Intense media scrutiny during their relationship was one of the reasons de Armas decided to leave the South California city shortly after the breakup, she has said.

Her romance with Affleck, 49, began after they met while filming the erotic thriller Deep Water in 2019.

The 34-year-old actor, who is from Cuba, told ELLE that the media flurry around their relationship was “horrible”.

However, she considered it a “good” thing, because it became “one of the reasons why I left Los Angeles”.

De Armas shared that going through the experience, which involved paparazzi following her wherever she went, “confirmed my thoughts about” living in the city.

“This is not the place for me to be,” she said. “It became a little bit too much. There’s no escape. There’s no way out.”

She described LA as a city “that keeps you anxious” because it gave her “the feeling of something you don’t have, something missing”.

Now, de Armas lives in New York with her boyfriend, Tinder vice president of special initiatives Paul Boukadakis.

The pair have been romantically linked since June 2021 and were photographed kissing while on a shopping trip in Los Angeles in December 2021.

According to Elle, de Armas and Boukadakis were introduced via a mutual friend during the pandemic.

Following her split from Affleck, who has since reignited his relationship with Jennifer Lopez and is now engaged, de Armas deactivated her Twitter.

A source was quoted by People as saying that de Armas initated the breakup because “their relationship was complicated”.

“Ana doesn’t want to be Los Angeles-based and Ben obviously has to since his kids live in Los Angeles,” the source reportedly said.

Elsewhere in the interview, de Armas opened up about feeling out of place in the US and in Spain, where she lived for eight years from the age of 18.

She said: “I feel sometimes that I’m not part of the Cuban artist community, and then I was in Spain and I feel like I’m not part of the community there…

“And then I’m here, and I feel like I’m not there yet either. You know? Am I part of the community? I barely know anybody.”

De Armas starred in James Bond: No Time To Die, which was released in October 2021, and is set to play Marilyn Monroe in the forthcoming biopic Blonde.