Oscar Isaac Biography

Stage and screen leading man Oscar Isaac is known for his intense dramatic performances, as well as for his role as fighter pilot Poe Dameron in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Born in Guatemala but raised outside of Miami, Isaac’s entertainment career began as a singer and guitar player in a Florida ska band.

Then he turned to acting, making a splash in New York theater shortly after graduating from The Juilliard School in 2005.

Early in his screen career he had mostly small roles, but ones that got him noticed: as Joseph in The Nativity Story (2006), as Prince John in Robin Hood (2010, starring Russell Crowe), and as a somewhat menacing ex-con in Drive (2011, starring Ryan Gosling).

Isaac made entertainment news in 2013 when he starred as a folk singer in the Coen brothers movie Inside Llewyn Davis, but his career really took off after 2014’s A Most Violent Year (co-starring his old friend from Juilliard, Jessica Chastain).

A bona fide leading man in the style of Al Pacino, Isaac was in the spotlight in 2015 for his role in the HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero, for starring in the Alex Garland sci-fi film Ex Machina, for joining the Star Wars franchise, (as Poe Cameron), the X-Men franchise (as Apocalypse) and the animated The Addams Family franchise (as Gomez).

Isaac’s other films include Annihilation (2018, another film by Alex Garland) and At Eternity’s Gate (2018, Isaac plays Paul Gauguin and Willem Dafoe plays Vincent Van Gogh).