Daniela Vega Hernández (born June 3, 1989) is a Chilean actress and mezzo-soprano singer. She is best known for her critically acclaimed performance in the Academy Award-winning film A Fantastic Woman (2017). At the 90th Academy Awards in 2018, Vega became the first transgender person in history to be a presenter at the Academy Awards ceremony. In 2018, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
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Early life and education
Daniela Vega Hernández was born on June 3, 1989, in San Miguel, Santiago Province, as the first child of Igor Alejandro Vega Inostroza, the owner of a print shop, and Sandra del Carmen Hernández de la Cuadra, a homemaker. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to the Ñuñoa district of Santiago, where her younger brother, Nicolás, was born. Vega began studying opera with her grandmother at the age of eight, and around the same time one of her schoolteachers noticed her aptitude for lyrical singing, which led her to begin performing in small productions around Santiago.
Growing up, she attended an all-boys school, where she was bullied. It was while she was attending the all-boys school in her teens that she realized she was a girl and began to transition; according to Vega, she came out to her family as transgender at around age 15, and they supported her immediately. Her parents and younger brother Nicolás were supportive of her, despite the conservative nature of Chile at that time. Vega described suffering depression for the three years of transition due to the lack of opportunities in Chile to progress her education or express herself, but Vega's parents were supportive and her father encouraged her to go to beauty school, and later theater school. After finishing secondary school, Vega supported herself for a time working as a hairstylist in a beauty salon while, without any further formal training, immersing herself in Santiago's local theater scene.
In 2019, following the enactment of Chile's Gender Identity Law under the second government of Sebastián Piñera, Vega legally changed her name to reflect her gender identity.
Career
2011–2017: Early roles and breakthrough
Vega was asked by a writer and director to collaborate on a stage piece about transitioning, using her experience as a foundation. Her contribution resulted in her going on to star in the eventual stage production, Martin de la Parra's 2011 play La mujer Mariposa (The Butterfly Woman). This piece, where she also had the opportunity to sing, ran for eight years in Santiago. During this time, she participated in more pieces, most notably in Migrante (Migrant), a piece about migration. Vega's profile was elevated to a wider audience when she appeared in the music video of the famous song "Maria" by Manuel García in 2014. The song and music video were made in collaboration with a gay suicide prevention organization, to help raise awareness and prevent suicide in gay teens. She made her screen debut in 2014 in a drama called The Guest (La visita), playing a trans woman at her father's wake.
The 67th Berlin International Film Festival saw the release of A Fantastic Woman (2017), directed by Sebastián Lelio, a film for which her performance was acclaimed by critics. Vega initially joined the production as a cultural advisor before director Sebastián Lelio decided to offer her the leading role. A Fantastic Woman tells the story of Marina (played by Vega) and Orlando (played by Francisco Reyes), an older man with whom she is in love and planning a future. After Orlando falls ill and dies, Marina is forced to face family and society, and fight again to show who she is: a fantastic woman. Critic Guy Lodge in a review for Variety praising Vega's performance said: "Vega's tough, expressive, and subtly distressed performance deserves far more than political praise." He continued to note that "It’s a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting, nurtured with pitch-perfect sensitivity by her director, who maintains complete candor on Marina’s condition without pushing her anywhere she wouldn’t herself go." Her name was strongly mentioned for an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She won an award for her performance at the Palm Springs International Film Festival for Best Actress in a Foreign Language Film. A Fantastic Woman went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Vega became the first openly transgender person ever to be a presenter at the Academy Awards ceremony in 2018.
Shortly afterward, in June 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited Vega to become a voting member, alongside fellow Chilean screenwriters Gonzalo Maza and Guillermo Calderón.
2018–present: International roles
In 2018, it was announced that Vega would have a recurring role in the Netflix miniseries Tales of the City. The following year, she was cast as one of three investigators leading the Chilean crime drama La Jauría (The Pack) for Televisión Nacional de Chile, Fábula and Fremantle, which streamed on Amazon Prime Video before airing on Chilean broadcast television. The series, based on Spain's 2016 Pamplona gang rape case, ran for two eight-episode seasons, in 2020 and 2022, with Vega reprising her role as police investigator Elisa Murillo in both.
In 2021, Vega made her European film debut, playing Lucya, a Chilean trans woman and opera enthusiast, opposite Niels Schneider in the Italian drama Futura, directed by Lamberto Sanfelice. The following year, she took on a dual role, as a witch and an enchanted figure, in the Spanish-language Netflix musical fantasy series Once Upon a Time... Happily Never After (Érase una vez... pero ya no), created by Manolo Caro and led by singer Sebastián Yatra. That same year, she starred in the Mexican-produced Spanish-language streaming series La rebelión opposite Aracely Arámbula.
In 2023, Vega appeared in the Chilean dark comedy Run Over, directed by brothers Gopal and Visnú Ibarra Roa, playing a witness to a hit-and-run accident inspired by a real case involving a well-connected Chilean family. That year, she also joined the ensemble cast of Amazon's dystopian drama series The Power, based on the novel by Naomi Alderman, portraying Sister Maria. In 2024, she starred in the Mexican Netflix comedy film Technoboys as Charlize, a member of a fading boy band.
In April 2026, it was announced that Vega had joined the ensemble cast of Las Malas, a Spanish-language feature adaptation of Camila Sosa Villada's novel of the same name, directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Armando Bo and led by Karla Sofía Gascón; the film, about a group of trans sex workers who take in an abandoned baby, was set to begin production in Córdoba, Argentina, and Montevideo, Uruguay, the following month.
Writing
Beyond acting, Vega has also published poetry. In 2019, she released a collection titled Rebeldía, resistencia, amor ("Rebellion, Resistance, Love").
Media image
Vega became the first transgender person in history to be an Academy Awards presenter in 2018. Time magazine named Vega one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018. Hernández can sing mezzo-soprano. She is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
