Chris Evans Thought Ana De Armas Was The Real Marilyn Monroe When She Showed Him Her ‘Blonde’ Transformation

As Ana de Armas racks up some rave reviews for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, her former co-stars have been coming forward with their own praise for what’s being heralded as a performance of a lifetime. One of those co-stars is Captain America himself, Chris Evans, who starred with de Armas in Knives Out, The Gray Man, and the upcoming Ghosted.

While talking to Variety for a cover profile on de Armas, Evans revealed that he didn’t even recognize the actress when she showed him a still from the Blonde production. She transformed so perfectly into Monroe that Evans couldn’t believe what he was looking at:

“I think this was one of the first opportunities she had to really sink her teeth into something incredibly demanding,” says Chris Evans, her co-star in “Knives Out” and “The Gray Man.” “I didn’t see one bit of fear; I saw excitement.”

When de Armas first showed Evans a still from her camera test, he says, “I remember looking at it and saying, ‘OK, that’s Marilyn … where’s your shot That’s you Holy shit! You’re going to win an Oscar for this!’”

Blonde arrives on Netflix at the end of the month, so it’ll be interesting to see how general audiences react to the film that has already garnished numerous headlines about its controversial NC-17 rating, which Dominik doesn’t think it deserved.

“This sort of Eisenhower morality doesn’t really seem to bear much resemblance to what’s going on in the world,” the Blonde director recently told MovieMaker. “But I feel like anything that’s showing a woman in sexual situations is sort of something that — nobody wants to look under that hood.”

Blonde starts streaming September 28 on Netflix.