Demián Bichir Biography

Demián Bichir is the Mexican movie star who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as an illegal immigrant gardener in the 2011 film A Better Life.

Demián Bichir was born in Mexico City to theatrically-minded parents — his mother was an actress, his father a director.

He began acting in the Mexican TV show Rina as a teen, and at age 22 he moved to New York City and then on to Los Angeles to try his luck.

Having little success, he returned to Mexico, where he found great success as a star of the 1994 crime film Hasta Morir (“‘Til Death”), winning a coveted Silver Ariel (the Mexican equivalent of the Oscar) as best actor.

Sturdy, quiet, and darkly handsome, he spent the next decade as a movie star in Mexico, most notably starring as a seductive wanderer in Sexo, pudor y lágrimas (“Sex, Shame and Tears”), a hit film that broke Mexican box-office records.

Then he returned again to the United States, where Steven Soderbergh cast him as Fidel Castro in the 2008 film Che (with Benicio del Toro as revolutionary leader Che Guevara).

Bichir has had fame on American TV shows as well, from Weeds (2008-10) and The Bridge (2013-14) to Grand Hotel (2019).

His other films include Machete Kills (2013, directed by Robert Rodriguez), Death in Buenos Aires (2014), Alien: Covenant (2017), Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight (2015) and the 2018 horror film The Nun.

Bichir made his directorial debut with 2016’s Un Cuento de Circo & A Love Song. It starred his wife of five years, Stefanie Sherk. She died in April of 2019 (her death was ruled a suicide).