Oscar Isaac

Isaac has been married to Danish film director and screenwriter Elvira Lind since 2017, having begun their relationship in 2012. The couple have two sons, Eugene and Mads, and make their home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In addition to their family life, Isaac and Lind maintain a close professional collaboration, co-founding the production company Mad Gene Media and partnering on projects including the Academy Award nominated short film The Letter Room (2020) and the documentary King Hamlet (2025).

Isaac has maintained a close, decades-long friendship with actor Pedro Pascal since they met while co-starring in the 2005 Off-Broadway stage production of Beauty of the Father. The two actors later shared the screen in the 2019 action thriller Triple Frontier. Isaac has also been an active voice on humanitarian matters, publicly expressing support for Armenian communities during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and signing an Artists4Ceasefire petition regarding the Gaza conflict.

Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada was born in Guatemala City to Guatemalan mother María Eugenia Estrada Nicolle and Cuban father Óscar Gonzalo Hernández-Cano, a pulmonologist. His family immigrated to the United States when he was five months old, living in Baltimore and New Orleans before settling in Miami, Florida. Raised in a devoutly religious household, he grew up alongside an older sister, climate scientist Nicole Hernandez Hammer, and a younger brother, journalist Mike Hernandez. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 2006.

During his youth in Miami, Isaac frequently directed home movies and performed in backyard plays with his siblings. He attended Westminster Christian School, where his rebellious behavior and pranks eventually led to his expulsion. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew destroyed his family's home, and following his parents' divorce, he moved with his mother to Palm Beach and attended Santaluces Community High School. An avid musician, he played lead guitar and sang vocals for several local bands, most notably the ska punk group The Blinking Underdogs, which once opened for Green Day.

After considering military enlistment as a combat photographer in the Marine reserves, Isaac pursued performing arts at Miami Dade College and performed on local stages, including Joseph Adler's productions at GableStage. To support himself, he worked as an orderly in the hospital where his father practiced. While visiting New York City to perform in an Off-Broadway play, he auditioned for the Juilliard School, where he was accepted in 2001 and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2005.

Following his graduation from Juilliard, Isaac appeared in Shakespeare in the Park productions of Two Gentlemen of Verona and Romeo and Juliet. His first prominent feature film role arrived as Joseph in Catherine Hardwicke's biblical epic The Nativity Story (2006), which was the first movie to hold its world premiere in Vatican City. He gained critical notice as political leader José Ramos-Horta in the Australian historical drama Balibo (2009), winning an AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. He followed with supporting performances as King John in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010) and an ex-convict in Nicolas Winding Refn's neo-noir thriller Drive (2011).

Isaac achieved widespread critical recognition in 2013 with his starring turn as a struggling folk musician in Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis. To prepare for the role, he learned the intricate Travis picking guitar style and performed all of his musical numbers live on set. The performance earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination and won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor. He quickly consolidated his reputation as a leading actor with J. C. Chandor's crime drama A Most Violent Year (2014), which earned him a National Board of Review Award for Best Actor, and Alex Garland's science fiction thriller Ex Machina (2015).

In 2015, Isaac reached a global audience when he was cast as Resistance pilot Poe Dameron in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Although director J. J. Abrams initially intended for the character to die early in the story, Isaac persuaded him to keep the character alive, allowing Poe to play a central role across the entire sequel trilogy, including The Last Jedi (2017) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019). He also took on blockbuster villain duties as Apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and portrayed Duke Leto Atreides in Denis Villeneuve's film adaptation of Dune (2021).

Alongside feature films, Isaac built an acclaimed television portfolio. He won a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Yonkers mayor Nick Wasicsko in the HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero (2015). He subsequently starred opposite Jessica Chastain in the 2021 miniseries remake Scenes from a Marriage, earning Primetime Emmy and SAG Award nominations, and took on three distinct personalities in the Marvel Cinematic Universe miniseries Moon Knight (2022). On stage, he portrayed the title character in a 2017 Public Theater production of Hamlet following the death of his mother, and starred on Broadway in the 2023 revival of Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.