Oscar Isaac's Real Name: Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada

Quick answer: Oscar Isaac's full name is Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada. He was born on March 9, 1979, in Guatemala City and raised mostly in Miami. He acts under his first and middle names, dropping his parents' surnames. He is known for Inside Llewyn Davis, Ex Machina, Poe Dameron in Star Wars, Dune, Moon Knight, and Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica's quick facts say "Oscar Isaac" is the byname of Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada. The Library of Congress name authority files him as "Isaac, Oscar," with the variants "Hernández Estrada, Óscar Isaac," "Hernández, Oscar Isaac," and "Isaac Hernández, Oscar." Its citation reads "born Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada, March 9, 1979."

Britannica names his parents as María Eugenia Estrada Nicolle, who is Guatemalan, and Óscar Gonzalo Hernández-Cano, a Cuban pulmonologist. Following Spanish naming custom, Hernández comes from his father and Estrada from his mother, and Isaac is his middle name. The family moved to the United States when he was five months old so his father could finish medical residencies. They lived in Baltimore and New Orleans before settling in Miami when he was six. He found acting in middle school and played guitar and sang in punk and ska bands as a teenager. After Miami Dade College, he talked his way into a late Juilliard audition in 2001 and graduated in 2005.

Career highlights

Isaac played Joseph in The Nativity Story (2006), Prince John in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010), and roles in Drive (2011) and The Bourne Legacy (2012). His breakout came as the struggling folk singer in the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), which earned a Golden Globe nomination. In 2014 he starred in A Most Violent Year and Ex Machina.

He played fighter pilot Poe Dameron in The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019). He was the villain in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) and voiced Gomez in The Addams Family (2019). After The Card Counter (2021), he played Duke Leto Atreides in Dune and starred in HBO's Scenes from a Marriage. In Marvel's Moon Knight (2022) he played Steven Grant and Marc Spector, and he voiced Spider-Man 2099 in Across the Spider-Verse (2023). In 2025 he played Victor Frankenstein for del Toro. On stage he played Hamlet at the Public Theater in 2017.

He married Danish filmmaker Elvira Lind in 2017. Their company Mad Gene Media produced the Oscar-nominated short The Letter Room (2020).

Name notes for searchers

Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada is his full legal name. "Oscar Isaac" uses only his first and middle names, so LOC also lists the forms "Hernández, Oscar Isaac" and "Isaac Hernández, Oscar" as variants.