Alice Braga

Early life

Alice Braga Moraes was born in São Paulo, Brazil. She was raised in a Catholic family. Her exposure to the world of acting came at an early age. Both her mother, Ana Braga, and aunt, Sônia Braga, are actresses, and Braga often accompanied them to film sets. She began her career by appearing in school plays and commercials. Her first commercial was for yogurt when she was eight years old. As a teenager she began pursuing roles in television and movies. She speaks fluent Portuguese, Spanish and English.

Career

In 1998, Braga debuted in a Portuguese-language short called Trampolim, and then returned to her schooling. Her big break came in 2002 when she was cast as Angélica in the critically acclaimed film City of God, for which she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Cinema Brazil Grand Prize. She took more time off and attended university while appearing in a pair of well-regarded South American films—2005’s Lower City and 2006’s Only God Knows—and in the popular Brazilian television program Carandiru, Outras Historias. Braga made her English-language debut in 2006 with a starring role with Brendan Fraser, Mos Def, and Catalina Sandino Moreno in Journey to the End of Night, which premiered at the 5th Annual Tribeca Film Festival. In 2007, Braga was cast in the Will Smith blockbuster I Am Legend and the drama Crossing Over, which stars Harrison Ford, Ray Liotta, and Ashley Judd. She also appeared in the 2008 David Mamet film Redbelt alongside Chiwetel Ejiofor. Braga portrayed Beth in the science-fiction film Repo Men. She starred as Isabelle in Antal Nimrod's Predators, which was shot and produced by Troublemaker Studios and Robert Rodriguez. In 2013, Braga appeared as Frey Santiago in Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. In 2014 starred as Eva in the Brazilian crime drama film Muitos Homens Num Só, as Vania in the Brazilian jungle film El Ardor, in the Argentine Romance film Latitudes and as Alice Taylor in Kriv Stenders Action-thriller Kill Me Three Times.

Braga stars in the drama series Queen of the South, produced for USA Network, an adaptation of Arturo Perez-Reverte's best-selling novel La Reina del Sur. This marks Braga's first big U.S. television role. Her previous small-screen credits were two parts in a non-English series.