Jamie Lee Curtis says she's embarrassed she assumed Ana de Armas was inexperienced when they first met

Jamie Lee Curtis apparently wasn't familiar with Ana de Armas' body of work when they first met on the set of Knives Out, director Rian Johnson's 2019 murder mystery.

The Halloween actress says she thought her costar was new to Hollywood as they started shooting the film.

"I assumed — and I say this with real embarrassment — because she had come from Cuba, that she had just arrived," Curtis said in a new Elle cover story on de Armas. "I made an assumption that she was an inexperienced, unsophisticated young woman."

"That first day, I was like, 'Oh, what are your dreams?'" Curtis added. She asked because she was so impressed by de Armas that she wanted to introduce her to Steven Spielberg so that she could possibly play the role of Maria in his adaptation of West Wide Story, and also to her godchildren, Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal. To her surprise, de Armas and Jake already knew each other.

Curtis went on to explain that de Armas is neither the outsider she first thought she was nor the Hollywood starlet audiences have seen at glamorous red carpet events. "She is not as fancy as maybe the advertisements would have you believe," she said. "She leans in, interested; talking to her is kind of give-and-take. She's curious and asks a lot of questions."

De Armas had already starred in War Dogs opposite Jonah Hill and Bradley Cooper, Blade Runner 2049 opposite Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, and Knock Knock opposite Keanu Reeves by the time she landed the role of Marta in Knives Out, which also starred Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, LaKeith Stanfield, and Toni Collette. Next, she'll portray Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, based on Joyce Carol Oates' novel.

Curtis, who has a familial connection to the late Monroe, said she was stunned by de Armas' transformation for Blonde.

"She showed me a picture of her as Marilyn," Curtis said. "My father [late actor Tony Curtis] was in Some Like It Hot and I have a lot of photos of my father and Marilyn. It was a couple of still pictures and one video of her moving through space with no audio. But it was so shocking because she was Marilyn."

Blonde premieres Sept. 23 on Netflix.

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