Wagner Moura

Wagner Moura is a Brazilian actor, director, musician, and filmmaker whose work has moved between Brazilian theatre, television, cinema, and international productions. Born in Salvador, Bahia, on June 27, 1976, he grew up in the city of Rodelas before studying journalism at the Federal University of Bahia. He became involved with acting while at university and worked with the acclaimed Brazilian director Fernando Guerreiro in Salvador’s theatre scene. Moura achieved wide recognition in Brazil through television. He played the charismatic Damião in the 2002 telenovela A Lua Me Disse and appeared in the comedy series Sexo Frágil. His major film breakthrough came with José Padilha’s Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite, 2007), in which he portrayed Captain Roberto Nascimento, an officer in Rio de Janeiro’s BOPE special police unit. The film won the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival. Moura returned as Nascimento in Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010), which became a major commercial success in Brazil and examined police violence, political corruption, and the expansion of paramilitary militias. International audiences came to know Moura especially through Netflix’s Narcos. From 2015 to 2016, he played Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, speaking Spanish for the role despite being a native Portuguese speaker. His performance earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama in 2016. Moura also appeared in the Netflix film Sergio (2020), portraying Brazilian United Nations diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello. The drama follows Vieira de Mello’s work in Iraq and the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. His Brazilian film work includes The Man of the Year, Carandiru, Lower City, The Middle of the World, and Father’s Chair. In 2013, he starred as journalist and activist Nascimento in Elysium, directed by Neill Blomkamp. He later appeared in Wasp Network, directed by Olivier Assayas, and in Alex Garland’s Civil War, released in 2024, playing journalist Joel alongside Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson. Moura made his feature-directing debut with Marighella, a biographical drama about Brazilian writer, politician, and guerrilla Carlos Marighella. The film stars Seu Jorge and focuses on Marighella’s resistance to Brazil’s military dictatorship during the late 1960s. Marighella premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019 and was released theatrically in Brazil in 2021. Moura has also been involved in environmental advocacy and has publicly supported Indigenous rights and efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest.