Oscar Isaac
Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada is an American actor. Recognized for his versatility, he has been credited with breaking stereotypes about Latino characters in Hollywood. He was named the best actor of his generation by Vanity Fair in 2017 and one of the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century by The New York Times in 2020. His accolades include a Golden Globe Award and a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2016, he featured on Time list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Born in Guatemala, Isaac moved with his family to the United States as an infant. As a teenager, he joined a punk band, acted in plays and made his film debut in a minor role. A graduate of the Juilliard School, Isaac was a character actor in films for much of the 2000s. His first major role was that of Joseph in the biblical drama The Nativity Story, and he won an AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for portraying political leader José Ramos-Horta in the Australian film Balibo. After gaining recognition for playing supporting parts in Robin Hood and Drive, Isaac had his breakthrough with the eponymous role of a singer in the musical drama Inside Llewyn Davis, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
Isaac's career progressed with leading roles in the crime drama A Most Violent Year, the thriller Ex Machina and the superhero film X-Men: Apocalypse. He became a global star with the role of Poe Dameron in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Isaac starred in the historical drama Operation Finale —which marked his first venture into production—the science fiction films Annihilation, Dune, and Frankenstein, the crime drama The Card Counter, and the animated superhero film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
On television, Isaac was the lead in three miniseries: Show Me a Hero, in which his portrayal of Nick Wasicsko won him a Golden Globe Award, Scenes from a Marriage, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Moon Knight. His stage work includes title roles in Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.
Early life
Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada was born on March 9, 1979, in Guatemala City to a Guatemalan mother, María Eugenia Estrada Nicolle, and a Cuban father, Óscar Gonzalo Hernández-Cano, a pulmonologist. He has an older sister, climate scientist Nicole, and a younger brother, journalist Mike. Isaac's family immigrated to the US when he was five months old, and they frequently moved around the country, living in Baltimore, New Orleans and Miami, where they eventually settled. Isaac became a United States citizen in 2006. He has French origins through his grandfather and describes himself as "a big mix of many things". He speaks English and Spanish.Isaac attended the private grade school Westminster Christian School in southern Florida. Drawn to creating music and film content since a young age, he struggled growing up in Miami, which in his view was not "a flourishing place for the arts" due to its rather conservative nature. When he was four, he and his sister organized plays in their backyard. Around age10, Isaac made a home movie called The Avenger, in which he played dual characters; he also participated in school plays. He wrote his first play in fifth grade; it was based on the Biblical story of Noah's Ark and featured a doubtful platypus. He found great joy at performing in front of people, which proved to be a stress relief at a time when his parents were separating and his mother became sick.
Growing up in a religious household, Isaac was a rebellious child and liked causing trouble at school. "I set off a fire extinguisher in the gym, defaced a mural, just stupid stuff", he recalled in a 2015 interview. At one point, his teacher screened off his desk from the rest of the class with a piece of cardboard. Isaac was eventually expelled. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew destroyed his family's home in Miami. Around this time, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Palm Beach where he attended a public high school. Isaac liked his new school and formed a band with boys he met in a trailer park. He learned music, played guitar and continued to make home movies, inspired by Quentin Tarantino's work: "action , with lots of blood and cars". Isaac spent his musical years living a "straight-edge" lifestyle.
At age14, Isaac and his bandmates performed Nirvana's "Rape Me" at a talent show and lost. He attended Santaluces Community High School and graduated in 1998. Isaac joined a Christian ska punk band named The Blinking Underdogs, which enjoyed some success, opening for Green Day. During this time, Isaac took a two-day workshop with a casting director and won a brief part in the independent film Illtown. A chance encounter with artistic director John Rodaz at the Area Stage Company in Miami Beach resulted in several roles on stage. Isaac next secured parts in Joseph Adler's 2000 productions of This Is Our Youth and Side Man at GableStage. To avoid getting typecast as a "Latino gangster", he used Isaac as his surname at auditions. In his own words, "Being called Oscar Hernández in Miami is like being called John Smith; there are 15 pages of us in the phone book." To support himself financially, he worked as an orderly at the hospital where his father worked.
Unsure about his career choice, Isaac considered enlisting in the Marines at one point. His father initially disapproved of this, but Isaac had recruiters convince him. Once he had taken the exam, Isaac said he wanted to do combat photography in military reserve, a job they did not offer. Instead, he studied performing arts at Miami Dade College and continued to act in plays. During a trip to New York City to play a young Fidel Castro in an Off-Broadway production of the play When it's Cocktail Time in Cuba, he successfully auditioned to study at the Juilliard School. While a student there, he was cast in a production of Macbeth and worked on the film All About the Benjamins. Isaac graduated from Juilliard with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2005.
Career
Early roles (2005–2010)
After graduating from Juilliard, Isaac continued to write music and performed in small New York clubs, and played Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona in The Public Theatre. The following year, he portrayed Federico García Lorca in New York City Center's production of Beauty of the Father; David Rooney of Variety remarked that his "injection of wry humor provides welcome levity". Also in 2006, he briefly appeared on the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and played Joseph in the biblical epic The Nativity Story, opposite Keisha Castle-Hughes. It was the first film to hold its world premiere in the Vatican City. Having grown up in a religious family, Isaac believed it was important to portray his character "as human as possible" and approach him like any other role. To understand Joseph's background better, he read a book titled The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. The film received mixed reviews and grossed $46million against a budget of $35million. A critic for The Abbotsford News wrote that Isaac brought the role "a freshness and vulnerability it usually" lacks. Toddy Burton of The Austin Chronicle found Isaac "endearing", yet thought that his character's selfless personality made him seem unreal.Isaac played Romeo alongside Lauren Ambrose in the Public Theater's Romeo and Juliet. Michal Daniel of The Record believed that a "persuasively young and inexperienced" Isaac was overshadowed by Ambrose but had an enthusiastic speech and a passionate behavior. For much of the rest of the 2000s, Isaac played minor roles in films—the thriller The Life Before Her Eyes, the biopic Che, the spy thriller Body of Lies and the Spanish historical drama Agora. In a book published by Rutgers University Press, which analyzes the performances of rising actors in the 2010s, Rick Warner believed that Isaac "momentarily steals the scene" as a United Nations interpreter in Che. Isaac won the AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his role as José Ramos-Horta in Balibo. Chris Barsanti of PopMatters opined that he played his role with "improbable charm". According to R. Kurt Osenlund of Slant Magazine, Isaac became "a bona fide scene-stealer" after Balibo.
Isaac began the 2010s with the role of the villain King John in the film Robin Hood. In preparation, he read about the character and shared ideas with director Ridley Scott on how to portray him. He liked playing a villain, as he said one does not worry about having to make them likable, enabling him to display more facets of his character. The film had a mixed critical consensus and grossed $321million against a budget of $200million. For R. Kurt Osenlund, Isaac skillfully overshadowed Russell Crowe, "bringing new, magnetic venom to the done-and-done-again role". Rick Warner wrote, "In his early minor film roles, Isaac makes the most of the few lines he is given, supplying emotional complexity not just verbally but also through his attractive face and piercing stare."
Breakthrough (2011–2014)
In 2011, Isaac received recognition for several supporting roles. His first role that year was of an asylum orderly in Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, for which he applied extensive makeup. Isaac credited Snyder for his openness to actors' input on set. He played a security guard in Madonna's W.E., a critical failure that British Vogue saw as his "one misjudgment", although Drew Taylor of IndieWire believed he was "one of the few worthwhile aspects" of the film. Isaac then portrayed a musician in 10 Years, in which he performed his own song "Never Had", and an ex-convict in Nicolas Winding Refn's critically acclaimed action drama Drive. Initially hesitant about Drive, he accepted the offer after working out a "more nuanced" and less stereotypical version of the character with Refn and screenwriter Hossein Amini. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter praised Isaac's "unanticipated intelligence and sincerity"; Madison Diazm, writing for Comic Book Resources in 2022, called the film an early testament to Isaac's ability to create tension. Drive earned $81.3million against a production budget of $15million.Isaac had four film releases in 2012. His first, the Mexican epic historical drama For Greater Glory, had him play a freedom fighter, for which he was nominated for an ALMA Award for Favorite Movie Actor – Supporting Role. After playing the main character's cousin in the comedy-drama Revenge for Jolly!, Isaac appeared in the action thriller The Bourne Legacy. Director Tony Gilroy originally considered Isaac for the lead role in the latter, but the film's production company decided against casting an unknown actor. Isaac instead won the brief part of a brainwashed assassin. The film was released to a mixed critical reception and box-office success. Lizzie Logan of Vulture opined that "Isaac took a character with very little screen time and turned him into a living, breathing, hurting person". Won't Back Down, a drama on the American educational system, was Isaac's last film in 2012. It received negative reviews and was a box-office failure.
In 2013, Isaac played the titular character of a struggling folk singer in 1961 Greenwich Village in the Coen brothers' drama Inside Llewyn Davis. Isaac accepted the project due to his high regard for the Coen brothers, who in turn were impressed with his musical talent. In preparation for the part, Isaac learned the guitar technique Travis picking and worked with musicians Erik Frandsen and T Bone Burnett. Before production began, Isaac behaved and dressed like Davis to observe people's reaction to him. The film received acclaim, as did Isaac's performance in what proved to be his breakthrough role. Critics from The Oregonian and St. Louis Post-Dispatch added that Isaac "anchors this film with a star-making, soulful performance", and "has a gift for being appealing even when he's unpleasant". A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote, "Isaac, a versatile character actor here ascending to the highest levels of his craft, refuses the easy road of charm. Like his character, he trusts his own professionalism and the integrity of the material." Scott opined that the musical performances elevated the film, especially Isaac's "The Death of Queen Jane" and "The Shoals of Herring". For the film, Isaac was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He next starred as Laurent LeClaire, a man who seduces his friend's wife in the erotic thriller In Secret. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune praised Isaac as the film's prime asset, noting that his "sly delineation of the charismatic Laurent provides the through-line".
In 2014, Isaac appeared in the thriller The Two Faces of January, starring alongside Viggo Mortensen and
Kirsten Dunst. He starred with Jessica Chastain in J. C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year, replacing actor Javier Bardem. Described by Isaac as "a gangster movie without the gangsters", the film follows his character Abel Morales, the ambitious owner of a heating-oil company, who is determined to protect his business in a city plagued by violent crime. Chandor first met Isaac upon Chastain's insistence and, finding him "precise, wild and alive", cast him in the part. When Isaac noticed that Morales's background was missing in the script, Chandor allowed him to create it, for which he researched Latin Americans' history in the 1950s and 1960s. Fascinated by Morales's duality—"cold, calculating businessman" but also "highly emotional and highly passionate"—Isaac read books about sociopaths and "corporate America" to prepare for the part. The film failed to recoup its budget but was a critical success. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post praised Isaac for "deliver a master class in that skill from the very first moment of A Most Violent Year to the last", adding, "he's a commanding screen presence, even when he's saying nothing." Tad Friend of The New Yorker believed that Isaac's portrayal was reminiscent of the work of actors Treat Williams, Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino. For his performance in the film, Isaac won a National Board of Review Award for Best Actor.