- Born
- Nickname
- Dani Vega
- Height5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
- Daniela Vega Hernández is a Chilean transgender actress and lyrical singer. She was born in San Miguel, Santiago, Chile. She was the first child of Igor Vega, a printing owner, and Sandra Hernández, a housewife. After a time, the family moved to Ñuñoa, where her brother Nicolás was born. At the age of eight, one of her teachers discovered her talent to sing opera. She began performing in small productions in Santiago, which developed in her a taste for arts.
After finishing high school, she started making a life as hair stylist. In her spare time and without any other formal education, she got involved with the local acting atmosphere. One her first plays was "La mujer mariposa" (The Butterfly Woman), where she starred.
In 2014 she got notoriety when she appeared in the video clip of the songwriter Manuel García's song "Maria". The same year she made her filming debut in The Guest (2014).
2017 has been a prolific year in her career. The play "Migrantes" was chosen as one of the best in the Festival Teatro a Mil. She also starred the Chilean movie A Fantastic Woman (2017). The film was released in the 67th edition of the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Berlin International Film Festival) and was critically acclaimed, eventual winning Best Foreing Language Film at the 2018 Academy Awards (Oscars).- IMDb Mini Biography By: AMP
- ParentsIgor Vega
- Sultry, pathos-filled mezzo-soprano voice
- Powerful intensity
- Became the first openly transgender person to ever present at the Oscars when she introduced Sufjan Stevens's performance of "Mystery of Love" from Call Me by Your Name (2017) (Dolby Theatre Los Angeles / 4 March 2018).
- Wasn't initially supposed to play the leading role in A Fantastic Woman (2017) and was approached by director Sebastián Lelio as a consultant on the research he was carrying on about the transgender Chilean community. As Daniela began to share her personal experiences with him, Lelio decided to entrust her with the role.
- First transgender performer to win the Fénix Award.
- Also an activist.
- [on her opera singing in A Fantastic Woman (2017)]: It's my real voice in the film. My grandmother, my father's mother, was blind. She taught me to listen to music, to the television, to the birds and the trees and the sound of water. She taught me to listen even though I could see. I find a lot of poetry in that, and it ended with me opening my ears to both sound and to music but also recognizing the most important thing to hear is silence. Like that song, "Enjoy the Silence"-that made real sense to me when I was growing up. I seek out hard things. I tried to imitate other singers. It was a self-discovery for me to move from imitating others to me growing to sing in my own voice. The opera was difficult and it felt like a personal conquest.
- [on the success of A Fantastic Woman (2017)] I feel like I'm playing. I feel like a diva from the '40s. I have a lot of fun with makeup and hair. I think that creating art comes from a very deep, poetic, and contemplative place, and then the presentation process is such a frivolous one. That said, the combination of the two is very fun. I take very seriously the creation process, but I take the red carpet, the dresses with the trains, the hair, and the makeup very lightly.
- [on playing the role of Marina Vidal in A Fantastic Woman (2017)] I did create a backstory for her. I incorporated a lot of resilience into her. When I discovered that I was a woman and I wanted to share it with the people around me and with the world, I discovered that women have an enormous capacity for resilience. The story of Marina and Orlando, of Marina and her sister, and her passion-a combination of waitressing by day and singing in the club by night-had to have an added element of resilience or else she would have fallen apart in those situations. I gave her a sense of endurance and courage so that she would stay strong and stay dignified.
- [on her career plans] I've acted in a much smaller film recently, in which I play a cisgender woman. I would like to play a mother or a pregnant woman. My body of work can expand because I like challenges. I think I could play male roles. I don't limit myself.
- [on the possibility of an Oscar nomination for A Fantastic Woman (2017)] It's like living a dream, and you don't wanna wake up. And I'm giving myself to whatever the future would like to gift us with. It would be wonderful to be nominated, it would be wonderful to win but it's really too far in the future to think about that. If I get nominated, I'm going to have the most beautiful dress made that the whole world will see.
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