Alice Braga

Alice Braga (birthname: Alice Braga Moraes) is one of the few Brazilian female actors of recent years to make a significant impact in both Brazilian and American movies, though is perhaps best known to viewers as the lead in the long-running narco TV drama, Queen of the South (2016-2021). Braga had a striking co-starring feature debut in the international arthouse hit, City of God (2002), co-directed by Fernando Mereilles and Kátia Lund, and co-starring Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, and Seu Jorge, and grossing ten times ($30.6 million) its $3.3 million costs.

Braga co-starred with Wagner Moura and Lazaro Ramos in co-writer (with Karim Aïnouz)/director Sergio Machado’s Lower City (2005), premiering in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section. Braga’s first starring role was in co-writer/director Carlos Bolado’s drama, Only God Knows (2006), opposite co-star Diego Luna, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and then the Guadalajara Film Festival.

Alice Braga co-starred in her first English-language movie, Journey to the End of the Night (2006), written and directed by Eric Eason, co-starring Brendan Fraser, Mos Def, Scott Glenn, and Catalina Sandino Moreno. Braga supported co-writer/director Heitor Dahlia’s black comedy, Drained (2006), starring Selton Mello, with Paula Braun and Lorena Lobato, and premiering at the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival.

Alice Braga’s first major Hollywood role was co-starring with Will Smith in the long-in-the-making, big-budget ($150 million) post-apocalyptic epic based on Richard Matheson’s novel, I Am Legend (2007), directed by Francis Lawrence, with Dash Mihok and Emma Thompson, and grossing a strong $585.4 million worldwide. Braga was cast by writer-director David Mamet in his martial arts-themed drama, Redbelt (2008), co-starring with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tim Allen, Randy Couture, Ricky Jay, Joe Mantegna, and Emily Mortimer, and Losing Money (a poor $2.7 global theatrical gross) for producer-distributor Sony Pictures Classics.

Alice Braga reunited with director Fernando Mereilles in the English-language version of the great Portuguese novelist José Saramago’s book, Blindness (2008), co-starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, Danny Glover, Maury Chaykin, and screenwriter-actor Don McKellar, premiering as the opening film of the Cannes Film Festival, but failing at the box office with a weak $20 million global return. Braga’s next Hollywood role was in writer-producer-director Wayne Kramer’s crime drama, Crossing Over (2009), with Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, Jim Sturgess, and Ashley Judd.

Brazilian-born Braga was directed by Argentine-born Miguel Sapochnik in Universal Pictures’ sci-fi Repo Men (2010), starring Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber, and Carice van Houten, but tanking at the box office. A more successful studio-made sci-fi movie for Braga was the Robert Rodriguez-produced Predators (2010), with Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Walton Goggins, and Laurence Fishburne, grossing a solid $127 million globally. Braga co-starred opposite Anthony Hopkins in the exorcist drama, The Rite (2011), with Colin O’Donoghue, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, and Rutger Hauer, and nearly tripling costs ($37 million) with a $96.6 million return.

Alice Braga had not worked with fellow Brazilian, filmmaker Walter Salles, in Brazil, but she did in the U.S., in screenwriter Jose Rivera’s adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (2012), co-produced by Francis Ford Coppola (who bought the rights to the novel in 1979), and co-starring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, and Elisabeth Moss; the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, but crashing commercially with a poor $8.8 million global gross.

The next epic Hollywood sci-fi movie for Braga arrived with writer-director Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013), starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, and fellow Brazilian Wagner Moura, returning a mild gross of $286 million. Alice Braga’s first movie as star-producer was the multi-media, globe-trotting production, Latitudes (2014), directed by Felipe Braga (no relation), and co-starring Daniel de Oliveira, followed by Argentine writer-director Pablo Fendrik’s El Ardor (2014), co-starring Gael Garcia Bernal, and which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and then the Morelia Film Festival.

After co-starring in the widely dismissed, little-seen black comedy, Kill Me Three Times (2014), starring Simon Pegg, Braga co-starred opposite Woody Harrelson and Liam Hemsworth in the Lionsgate-released Western, The Duel (2016), playing in theaters as well as Lionsgate’s VOD platform, Lionsgate Premiere. Braga was also in the Lionsgate-released Christian-themed drama, The Shack (2017), starring Sam Worthington, Octavia Spencer, Radha Mitchell, Graham Greene, and Tim McGraw, earning a robust $97 million global gross.

Unusually, Braga was cast in one of the few commercially failed ($49 million return) Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, The New Mutants (2020), co-written and directed by Josh Boone, with Blu Hunt, Maisie Williams, and Anya Taylor-Joy. In her first Hollywood-produced animated movie, Alice Braga delivered a vocal performance in co-writer/director Pete Docter’s well-reviewed but commercially failed ($121 return on a $150 million budget) Disney/Pixar film, Soul (2020), co-starring Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Angela Bassett, and Questlove, and despite its poor box-office, won two Oscars, including Best Animated Feature.

Braga’s second superhero franchise movie was on writer-director James Gunn’s DC Comics project, The Suicide Squad (2021), co-starring Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, and Viola Davis, but earning a surprisingly poor $168.7 million box office. Following this, opposite Ben Affleck, Alice Braga co-starred with JD Pardo in Robert Rodriguez’s sci-fi thriller, Hypnotic (2023). Braga starred in the Danis Goulet-directed A.I.-thriller, alternately titled House/Wife (2023), which co-starred Sarah Gadon and Kris Holden-Ried and was offloaded by streamer Netflix in January 2023 after being completed, and to be sold to another distributor.