After Star Wars: The Force Awakens, moviegoers around the world fell in love with Poe Dameron:
a loyal soldier, a good friend, and a heroic leader.
He's not afraid to crack jokes when squaring off against lightsaber-wielding psychos, and
the dude can fly any ship you put in front of him, whether it's an X-wing or a TIE fighter.
But best of all, Dameron is played by Oscar Isaac, one of the most talented actors in
Hollywood today.
And while Isaac might be best known for Star Wars, his resume includes everything from
indie thrillers to superhero blockbusters.
Here are all the places you've seen Poe Dameron before.
The Nativity Story
For his fifth feature film, Oscar Isaac landed the part of Joseph, one of the most important
but least-acknowledged characters to have been involved in the birth of Jesus.
Despite that lack of background info, Isaac totally succeeds in bringing this Biblical
character to life, playing Joseph as a virtuous man who sticks by his betrothed, Mary, even
when she mysteriously becomes pregnant with the son of God.
Body of Lies
One of Ridley Scott's lesser-known films, Body of Lies follows a CIA agent played by
Leonardo DiCaprio who's hunting insurgents across the Middle East.
But despite his fluent Arabic and scraggly beard, DiCaprio can't win the entire Iraq
War by himself, so he needs a bit of backup from his sidekick and field operative, Bassam.
Sporting a ponytail and a machine gun, Bassam is the guy who covers DiCaprio when the going
gets rough.
Unfortunately, he also doesn't live very long, getting blown into little bits by an RPG during
the first act.
But despite his limited screen time, Isaac totally holds his own against DiCaprio...
right up until he's turned into human toast.
Robin Hood
Just a few years after Body of Lies, Oscar Isaac re-teamed with Ridley Scott for a grittier
take on England's most famous outlaw, played by Russell Crowe.
This film didn't do especially well with critics or audiences, but Isaac's sleazy turn as the
infamous Prince John was a standout.
As a man obsessed with taxing peasants and cheating on his wife, Isaac took full advantage
of every opportunity to chew the scenery, stand around naked, and generally come off
as a royal jerk.
"You have a king and the runt of the litter to call you mother."
Sucker Punch
This 2011 film by Zack Snyder tells the story of Babydoll, played by Emily Browning, who's
framed for murder and shipped off to a horrific 1950s mental asylum.
In order to cope, she escapes into her subconscious — where she encounters dragons, Nazi robots,
and of course, this guy.
Oscar Isaac plays Blue Jones, an orderly at the mental asylum who becomes a slick pimp
in Babydoll's fantasy world.
The dual role gave Isaac lots of room to show off his acting chops—and his sexy singing
voice.
Drive
There's no denying that Ryan Gosling is the star of Drive, but Oscar Isaac is pivotal
to the plot of this 1970s-style thriller.
Isaac plays an ex-con who's hoping to start his life anew and set things right with his
wife, played by Carey Mulligan — which is complicated by the presence of Gosling as
the cool, quiet neighbor on whom she's developed a crush.
Hey, she's only human.
Despite a tense introduction, the two men end up collaborating on a criminal scheme,
but Isaac's character doesn't make to the end credits.
However, his death sets off a chain of events that culminates in the most gruesome elevator
beatdown in the history of film.
The Bourne Legacy
What the fourth Bourne film lacks in Matt Damon, it makes up in Oscar Isaac.
This time, the up-and-comer plays the enigmatic Number Three, a government operative who's
being punished for falling in love on the job.
Relocated to a cabin in the middle of Alaska, he survives just long enough on-screen to
give star Jeremy Renner a helping hand before being wiped out by an assassin drone.
Inside Llewyn Davis
Written and directed by the Coen brothers, this is the movie that finally put Oscar Isaac
on the radar of Hollywood and audiences alike.
He earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as the title character, a musician
struggling to make it in New York's folk music scene.
Whether he's auditioning for a hard-bitten music producer, verbally sparring with John
Goodman, or carrying a cat through Manhattan, you can't help but root for this guy.
"Llewyn is the cat."
"No, Llewyn HAS the cat."
Plus, you've gotta love watching Oscar Isaac perform a duet with Adam Driver long before
they met again as enemies in The Force Awakens.
A Most Violent Year
Set in 1981, this movie from 2014 finds Oscar Isaac playing Abel Morales, an immigrant businessman
with big plans and even bigger problems.
The owner of a heating oil company, Abel plans on taking control of the Big Apple, but first,
he needs to raise enough money for a pricey piece of real estate, tangle with a district
attorney, and discover who's stealing his oil.
With the beautiful and brutal Jessica Chastain egging him on, Isaac's conflicted character
has to decide if he should take the high road or another kind of path.
Ex Machina
Oscar Isaac is at his bad guy best here playing a tech genius named Nathan, a man with the
freaky ambitions of a Frankenstein and the tech savvy of a Zuckerberg.
In a movie where everyone is on their A game — including Alicia Vikander in the role
of a seductive robot — Isaac completely steals the show, oozing with menace and contempt,
bullying his AI creation, and tearing up the dance floor in one of the movie's most memorable
scenes.
X-Men: Apocalypse
No Hollywood resume is complete without a superhero flick, and Oscar Isaac gave the
genre a go with this one — in which he plays a blue-skinned mutant with a serious God complex.
After napping for a couple of millennia, Apocalypse emerges from his tomb, decides he hates the
'80s, and prepares for world domination… only to discover that he's stumbled into one
of the worst films of the X-Men franchise.
Yeah, critics hated X-Men: Apocalypse, and American audiences weren't crazy about it,
either, meaning and poor Isaac spent hours under all that makeup only to have his character
criticized as "an incredible letdown".
But while h ce didn't find success as a mutant, Oscar Isaac is set for life as a Star Wars
hero, so it all works out in the end.
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