Moisés Arias
Moisés Arias is an actor, born 1994.
Moises Arias was a Disney Channel kid who got out cleanly, which almost nobody manages. He was a child when Hannah Montana cast him as Rico, the tiny beach-shack tyrant, and that could easily have been the whole story: a catchphrase, a spin-off appearance, an anniversary special, done.
What he did instead was go small and strange. The Kings of Summer in 2013 gave him Biaggio, a boy with no backstory, no arc and some of the best lines in a Sundance comedy, played completely without irony and stolen out from under two leads. Monos cast him as a child soldier called Bigfoot in a Colombian war drama shot on a mountain, in Spanish, with nothing charming about it anywhere. Between those sits Bonzo Madrid in Ender's Game, a bully written as an obstacle and played as a boy with something to prove.
The rest is character work at the edges of larger films: Poe in Five Feet Apart, a friend written to be liked; Igor in The King of Staten Island; a small part in The Stanford Prison Experiment; the voice of Antonio in Despicable Me 2; a couple of minutes of Kong: Skull Island. Since 2024 he has had a steady role as Norm MacLean in Fallout, the vault kid who keeps asking questions nobody wants asked, and it is the best sustained use anyone has found for him. He is a working photographer as well.
Movies (26)
- Despicable Me 2 (2013)
- Kong: Skull Island (2017)
- Five Feet Apart (2019)
- Samaritan (2022)
- Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special (2026)
- Nacho Libre (2006)
- Ender's Game (2013)
- Astro Boy (2009)
- Ben-Hur (2016)
- Pitch Perfect 3 (2017)
- Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009)
- The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)
- The Kings of Summer (2013)
- The King of Staten Island (2020)
- American Murderer (2022)
- The Perfect Game (2009)
- Noobz (2013)
- Beethoven's Big Break (2008)
- Dadnapped (2009)
- Monos (2019)
- Wizards on Deck with Hannah Montana (2009)
- Divinity (2023)
- David Blaine: Real or Magic (2013)
- The Land (2016)
- ANSWR
- Little Bitches (2018)
TV (5)
Where to start with Moisés Arias
The Kings of Summer first. Biaggio is one of the great oddball supporting turns of the last fifteen years, a character who makes no sense and is never explained, and Arias commits to him without a single wink at the audience.
Then Monos, the serious one: a Colombian film about teenage soldiers, gorgeous and frightening, and about as far from the Disney Channel as an actor can travel. Fallout is the easiest recommendation, and his is the storyline that keeps the vault half of the show interesting.
Ender's Game and The Stanford Prison Experiment both have him playing a boy discovering he enjoys power, and work well back to back. Hannah Montana: The Movie is where he started, and Rico is still funny. Five Feet Apart is the one to pick if you want him warm.