Benjamín Vicuña

Benjamín Vicuña was born into a wealthy family in Santiago, Chile, and chose to break away from that destiny at eighteen. He preferred the hard floor of the Theater School of the University of Chile to the business offices his family had reserved for him. There he had demanding teachers such as Alfredo Castro and Rodrigo Pérez.

No one expected him to break away from everything so soon.

In 2000, he made his television debut in the telenovela Vivir al día. Shortly after, he signed his first contract with TVN for Pampa Ilusión, where he played a supporting but demanding role that required him to master restrained gestures in a format known for excess.

In 2006, he made his film breakthrough with Fuga, the debut feature by Pablo Larraín. Vicuña played a tormented musician who composes a symphony in a psychiatric hospital, a performance that earned him critical recognition at several European festivals and ended his phase as just a television face.

And the gamble paid off.

The assault on Buenos Aires and theater as a trench

In Argentina, audiences first received him with curiosity and then with real enthusiasm. His arrival on Buenos Aires television came with the comedy Don Juan y su bella dama in 2008, a daily soap that required him to shoot twelve hours a day at the Telefe studios.

And the pace of Buenos Aires changed his way of working. Because in Argentine television, improvisation and quick comebacks punish actors who hesitate in front of the camera.

In 2013, he joined the main cast of Farsantes, a Pol-ka legal drama in which he shared the set with Julio Chávez and Facundo Arana. The tension on the shoot made it into the press, but the series reached peaks of twenty ratings points in prime time on free-to-air television.

Alongside his commercial film work, he co-founded Centro Mori with Gonzalo Valenzuela. The initiative started with a modest hall in the Bellavista neighborhood of Santiago and grew to run four simultaneous theaters across Chile and Argentina.

But the theater business had other rules.

In 2015, he starred in El bosque de Karadima under director Matías Lira. In the film, he played one of the victims of the sexual abuse committed by the priest Fernando Karadima, an uncomfortable project that sparked a nationwide legal debate in Chile.

The two shores and the industry clash

In 2008, he made his way into Spanish fiction with the comedy Fuera de carta, directed by Nacho G. Velilla. That role as an Argentine cook opened a lasting line of contact with Madrid production companies that lasted more than a decade.

In 2010, he joined the final season of Paco's Men, playing Inspector Decker. Years later, the production company Globomedia signed him in 2018 to play prison officer Antonio Hierro in the third and fourth seasons of Locked Up, a surly character who avoided any hint of melodrama.

So the actor lined up shoots between Europe and South America on back-and-forth contracts. In 2020, he filmed the period series Inés del alma mía, co-produced by RTVE and Boomerang TV, where he played the conquistador Rodrigo de Quiroga.

In 2024, he led the cast in Madrid for the feature film El silencio de Marcos Tremmer, a co-production shot in Spain, Uruguay and the Dominican Republic with a budget of over two million euros.

In 2026, he wrapped his role in the war satire El malentendido, directed by Álex de la Iglesia. The shoot was scheduled for six weeks on location in Spain and Chile, with a crew of seventy and a post-production calendar set for the international market.