The Untold Truth Of Oscar Isaac

When he was just an infant, Oscar Isaac and his parents came to the U.S. from Central America. "As his father completed his medical training, the family moved from Baltimore to New Orleans," The Guardian detailed. "We were never in one place for more than, I would say, three to four years," Isaac told the outlet. As a result, the boy dreamed up an imaginative origin story — he remembered telling his classmates in school that he was Russian. One day, Isaac even went home and asked, "So Dad, we're Russian, right?"

Sadly, while living in Louisiana, Hurricane Andrew destroyed the family's home. "I remember having dreams about that house," the actor confessed to The Guardian. After the storm, Isaac and his family relocated to Miami, Florida. There, Isaac began to discover his passions, including music and acting. "It just hit in a very specific way that when I found play-acting — mimesis, imitation — suddenly, that felt like a way of understanding the world," he said about becoming a thespian. Isaac added that acting helped him grow as a person, and it eventually became a necessity in understanding life and emotions.

Oscar Isaac was only in first grade when the teacher barricaded his desk due to his frequent performances. The innovative student transitioned to puppet shows after that. Per The Globe and Mail, young Oscar's privacy screen was "a cardboard car-windshield shade."

Part of Oscar Isaac's impressive physical features are his beard and hairstyles. Although he's played roles clean-shaven, Isaac is especially renowned for his perfect facial hair. In preparation for his "Inside Llewyn Davis" audition, the actor grew his beard. Isaac explained to Rolling Stone that the beard helped "droop the face a little bit." For his next major role in "Ex Machina," Isaac once again grew a beard. The actor told Entertainment Tonight that it only took him a few months to fully grow out his look. Aware of his ability to easily transform on camera, Isaac said, "I guess I'm one of those faces where facial hair changes it drastically, as well."

As for his hair, it can be both a blessing and a curse. Isaac revealed on "Conan" that while filming "Star Wars," the producers didn't want his hair too curly. So, he remembered "there was a lot of adjusting of the hair" on set. Even other actors can hardly believe Isaac's perfect coif. During production, he caught his co-star Harrison Ford staring at his hair. Isaac shared that the veteran actor then told him, "You're wearing a wig." When Isaac told him that it was the real deal, Ford walked away in disbelief.

Then, for the 2021 film "Dune," Isaac sported another incredible beard. A professional groomer told GQ, "The beauty of his beard is that it's a natural color, so he embraces his gray."

At the 2021 Venice Film Festival, Oscar Isaac caused major swooning after appearing on the red carpet. He and actor Jessica Chastain had a flirty moment with each other, as seen in a video posted by Madame Figaro. The pair embraced and posed for photos to promote their HBO series "Scenes From a Marriage." Then, Isaac lowered his head and appeared to go in for a kiss on Chastain's arm. The move caused a huge smile from both actors and whistles of excitement from the crowd. After the hot moment, the internet went wild. 

One of the funniest parts was that upon video replay, it looked more like Isaac was smelling Chastain's armpit than trying to kiss her arm. He joked to Entertainment Tonight, "Look, if there's an armpit right next to me ... what else are you supposed to do?" Even though both actors were married to other people in real life, their chemistry partly came from a shared history. Both Isaac and Chastain were students at The Juilliard School, the prestigious New York performance school.

"Oscar and I have been friends — we went to college together," Chastain said in an interview on "Today." "We've been friends more than half of our lives, and we know so much about each other," she explained about the chemistry between her and Isaac. Chastain added, "We know how to make each other laugh without even saying anything. We can almost read each other's minds."

Oscar Isaac is a man of many faces. With the ability to easily change his hair and beard style, plus his handsome features, Isaac looks like he could be from anywhere. Director Bryan Singer once called Isaac a "global human" based on his appearance and the nationalities he portrayed in entertainment, per The Guardian. As of 2017, Isaac played "European, Egyptian, Polish, English, French, Mexican, East Timorese, Welsh, Indonesian, Greek, Cuban, Israeli, and Armenian" characters. But his true origin is Central America. Isaac was born as Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada in Guatemala, the son of his father from Cuba and his mom from Guatemala. The family then moved to the United States when Isaac was just five years old.

The actor also expressed a global approach to his portrayals when speaking with Rolling Stone: I'm interested in telling stories about the human experience that are not necessarily just about my personal circumstances. So how do I

navigate that? I feel like I've been able to."

Despite shortening his full name for a simpler stage name, Isaac didn't hide his ethnicity as he started to become more famous. Though the actor explained he loved his family from the two countries, he didn't feel comfortable being the face of Guatemala or Cuba. "No, I don't want to represent," Isaac said about his heritage. "To speak for a group of people is not something I've ever felt comfortable doing," he admitted to The Guardian. According to the actor, "I don't represent anybody except this organism that I happen to be."

Joining the "Star Wars" franchise was life-changing for Oscar Isaac. But instead of starting in a galaxy far, far away, his journey began in France. Director J.J. Abrams invited the actor to the legendary Café de Flore in Paris for a meeting in 2014. Abrams set his sights on Oscar Isaac to play fighter pilot Poe Dameron, a "wonderful, daring, sardonic, brave, loyal," the director told GQ. 

The two sat together at the cafe, and Isaac had a mini audition, reading lines from the script directly off Abrams' iPhone. Reportedly, the two men hit it off and "talked into the night about the story and what the role might become" (per GQ). In the interview, it was mentioned that the role of Poe sounded quite similar to Han Solo in the original trilogy. Abrams allegedly responded, "I would like to think there's room for more than one rogue in 'Star Wars.'"

Isaac joined the cast, but his character wasn't supposed to have a happy ending in the trilogy. Originally, the director planned to kill off Poe. During another talk with Abrams about accepting the role, "I said that I wasn't sure because I had already done that role in other movies where you kind of set it up for the main people and then you die spectacularly," Isaac told Esquire.

The story behind Oscar Isaac securing the lead role in "Inside Llewyn Davis" is almost as impressive as the film itself. The Coen brothers' movie was based on "The Mayor of MacDougal Street," a memoir by folk musician Dave Van Ronk. Before auditioning, Isaac was filming a scene for another movie when he spotted a curious extra playing a drunk man. 

"In between takes there was a guitar laying around and he picked it up and started playing. And he was incredible," Isaac remembered in a Rolling Stone interview. Intrigued, Isaac asked the man about his guitar skills, because the audition for "Inside Llewyn Davis" was approaching. According to Isaac, the extra revealed he used to play with Van Ronk. He then invited Isaac to his home and said, "I live on McDougal Street."

The chance encounter continued at the extra's place, where he and Isaac listened to old records of Van Ronk. The man also showed Isaac how to play guitar in the style of the late Van Ronk. "He started teaching me this Travis-style picking, which I was not aware of — didn't know how to do it," Isaac explained. Having found the perfect mentor, Isaac began taking guitar lessons from the man and the two played at open mics in New York City. Then, "the last day before the audition I played for him and then he looked at me and goes 'I see the big guy behind you giving the thumb's up,'" Isaac said.

Oscar Isaac and Elvira Lind welcomed their first child together in 2017. The couple named their son Eugene "in honor of Isaac's mother, whose middle name was Eugenia," People reported. Sadly, Isaac's mom died two months before Eugene was born. When it came time for the birth, Isaac revealed that he felt comfortable in the delivery room. 

During an interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Isaac explained, "I did alright. I worked at a hospital — my dad was a doctor and so I'd kind of been used to some of that." Once his son grew a little older, Isaac told the host what life was like as the dad of a nine-month old. The actor admitted he wasn't getting much sleep those days. Plus, the little guy was super active when awake. "He's crawling. He's moving furniture around," Isaac said about his son. Though the actor admitted that after the holidays in 2017, he realized his apartment was far from baby-proofed. "This is a death trap," Isaac said about his home in New York.

In 2019, Isaac and Lind welcomed their second child, another boy. The actor was 40 years old at the time, per People.

After appearances in "Star Wars" and "X-Men" movies, Oscar Isaac talked about his move from indie to high-profile roles. "I believe people can say that I've sold out, but I think there's a different feeling nowadays about 'hey man, you've got to hustle,'" he told Reuters. According to the actor, America "is based on the hustle, hustle for your dollar, whatever you've got to do, and you give props to the person that hustles the most." This hustle certainly paid off for Isaac, who as of 2021, was worth an estimated $10 million.

Even with the impressive bank account, Isaac appeared to not spend much on living arrangements. As of 2017, he lived "in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, in the same one-bedroom apartment he had before he caught the Coen brothers' attention," The Guardian reported. In his modest "single guy's apartment," among Isaac's most prized possessions were his speakers, he said on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Isaac explained that he had floating speakers equipped for optimal sound but admitted that "if you just kind of touch the stand, they would fall over." Once he had an infant son, Isaac's wife convinced him to remove the potentially dangerous electronics.

As detailed by Esquire, Isaac lived in the one-bedroom apartment with his wife, son Eugene, and "their Boston Terrier French Bulldog-cross Moby." At the time of the interview, the outlet suggested the family was planning an "imminent move to a leafier part of Brooklyn."