Mario Casas

Mario Casas Sierra is a Spanish film and television actor and director. He is widely recognized for his work across Spanish cinema and television, having earned accolades such as a Goya Award, two Gaudí Awards, and three Feroz Awards over the course of his career.

Casas was born on June 12, 1986, in A Coruña, Spain, to a nineteen-year-old father who worked as an ébéniste and a seventeen-year-old mother. At four years old, his family relocated to Barcelona. During his childhood, he appeared in commercial advertisements for brands including Cola Cao, Scalextric, and Telepizza. Between the ages of seventeen and eighteen, he moved with his family to Madrid, where he supported himself with odd jobs while undertaking formal acting training at the Cristina Rota acting school.

He began his professional acting career in 2005 at the age of nineteen, appearing in television soap operas and securing episode roles in series such as Obsesión, Motivos personales, and Mujeres. In 2006, Casas made his feature film debut in Summer Rain, directed by Antonio Banderas. That same year, he joined the television series SMS: Sin Miedo a Soñar in his first main television role. He subsequently gained broader recognition playing Aitor Carrasco in the Antena 3 series Los hombres de Paco from 2007 to 2010.

His early feature film career expanded rapidly with appearances in box-office hits such as Sex, Party and Lies and Brain Drain in 2009, followed by Neon Flesh and Three Steps Above Heaven in 2010. His performance as the character Hache in Three Steps Above Heaven earned him wide popularity in Spain, and the project became the highest-grossing Spanish film of that year. Alongside his film work, Casas starred in the television series El barco from 2011 to 2013.

Throughout the 2010s, Casas took on leading roles in numerous Spanish and international film productions. His screen credits included Unit 7, I Want You, The Mule, Witching & Bitching, Ismael, My Big Night, Palm Trees in the Snow, Toro, The Bar, The Skin of the Wolf, Bye, The Occupant, and The Paramedic. He also participated in English-language projects, including Eden and The 33. In 2016, he starred in the commercial success The Invisible Guest, and in 2018, he played Francisco Boix in The Photographer of Mauthausen, for which he lost around twelve kilograms.

In recent years, Casas has continued to earn critical recognition and has expanded into film directing. His leading performance in the 2020 film Cross the Line won him his first Goya Award for Best Actor. He made his feature directorial debut with the film Caged Wings, also known as My Loneliness Has Wings, which began shooting in October 2022 and featured his brother Óscar Casas. He later earned renewed industry praise, a Goya nomination, and a Gaudí Award for Best Actor for his performance in Away. In April 2026, he began filming his second directorial project, A puño descubierto.