Who is Oscar Isaac? The New Talent That’s Turning Heads

Oscar Isaac in The Card Counter

With so many hit movies and rich history around the movie scene, we have decided today to focus on one of our favorite actors: Oscar Isaac. Born on 9 March 1979 in Guatemala as Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada, Isaac grew up in Florida after his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was only five months old. His family constantly moved around to different parts such as Washington D.C., Virginia, Louisiana, and Maryland before settling in Miami.

He talks about how his evangelical upbringing was firmly rooted in a very Christian household. After receiving French inheritance from his grandfather, he began referring to himself as French-Guatemalan, amongst a “very big mix of many things”. Isaac was a naughty child at his Westminster Christian private grade school, where he enjoyed making kids laugh but often ended up in trouble. On occasion, he was screened off from the rest of his class by a cardboard sheet separating him from the rest of his peers.

Early Career

Isaac was a musician before becoming a famous actor, playing lead guitar and singing vocals in a ska-punk band, The Blinking Underdogs. The band opened for Green Day as well as The Mighty Mighty Bosstones but he chose to focus on his acting career when he got accepted into the prestigious acting program of New York’s Juilliard School in 2001.

After graduating from Juilliard School in 2005, he starred in The Nativity Story in 2006 landing his first major film role. He went on to play a bunch of small roles and even starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in Agora in 2009. Isaac won the Australian Film Institute Award for best supporting actor in the movie Balibo. He plays the role of José Ramos-Horta, a former president of East Timor (and co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize) set during the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975.

The Card Counter (2021)

Most recently, Isaac starred in The Card Counter, an epic revenge-thriller about an ex-military interrogator who turns into a serious gambler. He faces many demons when he meets someone forcing him to face his past which has never ceased to haunt him. These days, gambling is more accessible and more enjoyable than ever, with online casinos from the same group making gambling possible from the comfort of your own home.

The Card Counter was written and directed by Paul Schrader, and Isaac co-stars alongside Tye Sheridan and Tiffany Haddish. Schrader teams up with Martin Scorsese for the fifth time with Scorsese as the executive producer. Together they also worked on Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Bringing Out the Dead, and The Last Temptation of Christ.

Filmography

With many years of perseverance and polishing his craft, it was in 2013 that Oscar Isaac received a Golden-Globe nomination for his role in Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen Brothers’ folk music-themed comedy-drama. He went on to star in many more movies that landed him internationally acclaimed status like A Most Violent Year (2014), Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015), and X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). In 2015, Isaac’s role in the miniseries, Show Me a Hero, landed him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film.

Isaac also starred in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi (2017), Scenes from a Marriage (2021), and most recently Denis Villeneuve’s science-fiction epic Dune. With no end in sight and a constant expansion in the roles he lands, Isaac is set to star as Marc Spector aka Moon Knight in the upcoming Disney series, Moon Knight set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and to be released in 2022.