Wagner Moura, our guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is arguably the most successful and respected Brazilian actor in the world. He has been described by NPR as “superb,” by The Washington Post as a “powerhouse” and by the New York Times as “simply great.”
Moura’s credits include starring roles in two of Brazil’s biggest blockbusters of all time, 2007’s Elite Squad and 2010’s Elite Squad: The Enemy Within; the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar on one of Netflix’s first hit series, Narcos, on which he starred from 2015 through 2016, and which made him world-famous and brought him a Golden Globe Award nomination; characters in American films like 2024’s Civil War and TV shows such as the 2025 limited series Dope Thief; and, most recently, a part — or three different parts, in a sense — in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s acclaimed Brazilian film The Secret Agent.
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The Secret Agent, a drama about a political fugitive that is set in 1977, at the height of the military dictatorship that presided over Brazil from 1964 through 1985, is the Brazilian entry for this season’s best international feature Oscar race, and a likely Oscar nominee not only in that category, but also for best picture and best actor.
At the Cannes Film Festival, where The Secret Agent premiered last May, the jury awarded its best director prize to Filho and its best actor prize to Moura (making Moura the first South American ever to win it). The film subsequently was the New York Film Critics Circle’s pick for best actor and best international feature, and won the best foreign language film prize at the Critics Choice Awards, where Moura was nominated for best actor. And it is headed into Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards as a nominee for best picture (drama), best non-English-language film and best actor (drama).
Over the course of this conversation at the L.A. offices of The Hollywood Reporter, Moura, 49, reflected on why he grew up thinking it was unlikely that he would ever be able to have a screen acting career; how the controversial Elite Squad films led to his role on Narcos; and how the 2018-2022 Brazilian presidency of Jair Bolsonaro impacted his country and career, and inspired Mendonça Filho and him to make The Secret Agent (the first project in 12 years in which he has acted in his native language, Portuguese).
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Moura, who is an American citizen, also offered his reaction to Saturday’s invasion of Venezuela and capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. military at the order of president Donald Trump: “It’s just unacceptable. This has nothing to do with supporting Maduro or his regime — I think he’s a dictator and Venezuela deserves better than Maduro. But the United States invading a country, bombarding a country, killing people in a country, and kidnapping its president? It’s a very, very dangerous precedent. It makes us think of old times of American imperialism, the Monroe Doctrine and the “big stick” thing. I’m sure you know that all the dictatorships in South America in the ’60s and the ’70s — the one that we are talking about in The Secret Agent, for example — were supported by the C.I.A. in the United States. So this cannot be accepted. And I’m not seeing a strong reaction from the international community.”