Matheus Nachtergaele: The Life Story Behind Brazil's Character Star
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There is a kind of actor who never plays himself. He disappears. He changes his walk, his voice, his face, and when the film ends you remember the character and forget the man who played him. Matheus Nachtergaele is that kind of actor, and he is one of the best Brazil has produced. He has played a trickster from the northeast, a man in a yellow-lit port city, a priest, a criminal, a father, and a fool, and each one feels like a person you might meet on the street. He has won the biggest acting prizes in Brazilian cinema twice. He has directed a film of his own. And in 2024, more than twenty years after he first played João Grilo, he put the character on again, and the audience welcomed him back as if no time had passed at all.
Matheus Nachtergaele was born on 3 January 1968 in São Paulo. He did not come to acting through television. He came through the theatre, through a company that treated the stage as a laboratory, and through a single play, Livro de Jó, that made his name among people who care about theatre. From there he moved into film, and film gave him the roles that made him famous: Four Days in September, Midnight, O Auto da Compadecida, City of God, and Mango Yellow, all within a few years, all different, all unforgettable.
What follows is the story of a character actor in the truest sense: a man who chose range over fame, who built his career on the stage and in the cinema, and who became, without ever trying to be a leading man, one of the most respected performers of his generation.
São Paulo, 1968, and a Company Called Vertigem
São Paulo in 1968 was a city under a military regime, a place of censorship, protest, and art made in the shadows. Matheus was born into that city on 3 January 1968, and he grew up in a Brazil where theatre mattered in a way it is hard to explain now. The stage was not only entertainment. It was a place where people said things that could not be said anywhere else, where a play could be an act of resistance, and where an audience could hear the truth spoken aloud. A boy growing up in São Paulo in the 1970s and 1980s absorbed that idea without being told it. Theatre was serious. Theatre was necessary.
He found his way to the stage as a young man, and he found it through a company that would define his early career. Teatro da Vertigem, the Theatre of Vertigo, was founded in São Paulo and led by the director António Araújo, and it worked in a way that was unusual even for experimental theatre. The company did not perform in ordinary theatres. It performed in unusual spaces: a hospital, a church, a prison, a river. The audience moved through the space with the actors, and the line between watching and participating disappeared. For a young actor, that kind of theatre is a hard school. There is no curtain, no safe distance, and no place to hide. The actor must be fully present, in a real space, with real people standing close enough to touch.
Matheus joined the company in the early 1990s, and he threw himself into its work. He learned to use his body as an instrument, to move through a space with purpose, to speak in a way that reached people standing metres away in a dark corridor. He learned that acting is physical before it is verbal, that a character lives in the shoulders and the hands before it lives in the words. That training stayed with him for the rest of his career, and it is visible in every film he has made since. When you watch Matheus on screen, you are watching a body that knows what it is doing.
The São Paulo theatre scene of those years was full of companies like Vertigem, full of young actors who believed that the stage could change the world, or at least change the people in the room. Matheus was one of them, and he was one of the best. He did not want to be famous. He wanted to be good, and the theatre gave him a place to become good without anyone watching the box office.
Livro de Jó: The Play That Made His Name
In 1992, Teatro da Vertigem staged Livro de Jó, the Book of Job, based on the biblical story of a man who loses everything and argues with God. Matheus played a central part in the production, and the show became one of the most talked-about theatre events in Brazil. It was performed in an unusual space, with the audience moving through it, and it asked the actors to carry a story about suffering, faith, and endurance that is as old as the Bible itself. Matheus’s performance was recognised as exceptional, and the play won awards. For a young actor who had been working in experimental theatre, it was a breakthrough.
Livro de Jó matters for a reason beyond the awards. It showed what Matheus could do with a serious text, with a story that has no jokes and no easy answers. Job is a man who has lost his family, his wealth, and his health, and who demands an explanation from God. Playing that kind of role requires an actor to be still, to be present, and to let the weight of the words do the work. Matheus did that, and the people who saw the production remembered it for years. It was the first proof that he was not only a comic actor, though comedy would later make him famous. He was an actor who could carry tragedy as well.
The play also gave him a reputation among directors. A theatre director who had seen Livro de Jó knew that Matheus could handle a difficult role, that he would prepare, and that he would not look for the easy laugh. Film directors began to notice him, and the move from stage to screen, which is hard for many theatre actors, began to happen naturally. He did not abandon the theatre. He carried it with him, and the film camera, which sees everything, rewarded the precision he had learned on stage.
There is a detail about Vertigem that is worth keeping in mind. The company worked in real spaces, and the audience was close. An actor in that setting cannot fake an emotion. The people watching are standing next to you. They can see your breathing, your hands, your eyes. Matheus learned to be truthful in that setting, and truthfulness became the centre of his work. When he later played João Grilo, a character who lies constantly, the lies worked because the actor underneath them was truthful. The audience believed the man, even when the man was lying. That is a paradox, and it is the mark of a great character actor.
Four Days in September and Midnight
Matheus moved into cinema in the late 1990s, and the films came quickly. In 1997 he appeared in Four Days in September, known in Portuguese as O Que é Isso, Companheiro?, a film about the kidnapping of the American ambassador in Brazil in 1969, during the military regime. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign language film, and it brought Brazilian cinema to an international audience. Matheus was part of a strong cast, and the film showed that he could work in a serious, political story, in a production with a large budget and a large audience.
In 1998 he played in Midnight, known in Portuguese as Meia-Noite, a film that gave him his first major acting prize. He won the Best Actor award at the Grande Prêmio do Cinema Brasileiro, the biggest film prize in Brazil, for his work in the film. It was a significant moment. The Grande Prêmio is voted on by people in the Brazilian film industry, and winning it means that your fellow professionals think you are the best in the country. Matheus won it again, two years later, for O Auto da Compadecida, becoming one of the few actors to win the prize twice.
Midnight also showed a different side of him. The film is dark and intimate, and his performance in it is quiet and controlled, the opposite of the loud comedy that would make him famous a few years later. He was proving, film by film, that he could do more than one thing. He could be funny, he could be serious, he could be frightening, and he could be tender. The range was there from the start, and the prizes were only the public recognition of what directors already knew.
The late 1990s were a turning point for Brazilian cinema as well. After years of difficulty, new films were being made, new directors were emerging, and audiences were returning to Brazilian stories. Matheus was in the middle of that revival, and his work in those years helped to define it. He was not a star in the television sense. He was a film actor, and film actors in Brazil have a different kind of fame: smaller, more intense, and built on the respect of people who love cinema. That was the fame he wanted, and it was the fame he earned.
João Grilo, the Skinny Trickster
In 2000, Matheus played the role that made him famous across the whole of Brazil. In O Auto da Compadecida, known in English as A Dog’s Will, he was João Grilo, a poor, skinny man from the northeast who survives by his wits. João Grilo lies, cheats, and schemes, and he does it with a speed and a charm that makes the audience love him even when he is behaving badly. He is a trickster, a figure from Brazilian folklore, a man who has nothing and who uses his mind to get by. Matheus played him with a physical energy that was unlike anything he had done before: quick movements, a sharp voice, a body that seemed to be always leaning forward, always looking for the next angle.
The film comes from a play by Ariano Suassuna, and it had first been made as a television miniseries in 1999, with Matheus and Selton Mello as the two friends, João Grilo and Chicó. The film version, directed by Guel Arraes, followed in 2000, and it became one of the most watched Brazilian films of all time. João Grilo and Chicó trick a town, meet the Devil, and plead their case before Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and the story is told with humour and with a deep affection for the people of the northeast. Matheus’s João Grilo is the engine of the film. He talks fast, he thinks faster, and he never stops moving.
What made the performance work was the body. Matheus is a tall man, and he made João Grilo skinny and wiry, a man whose body tells you he has never had enough to eat. He moved like a man who is always hungry, always alert, always ready to run. His voice was sharp, his gestures were quick, and his eyes were always watching. It was a physical performance, built on the stage training he had received with Teatro da Vertigem, and it was completely different from the quiet work he had done in Midnight. The same actor, two years apart, had played a dark, still character and a fast, hungry trickster, and both were convincing. That is range, and it is rare.
João Grilo won Matheus his second Grande Prêmio for Best Actor, in 2001, and it made him a household name. People quoted his lines, imitated his walk, and recognised him on the street as Grilo. For a character actor, that kind of fame is a strange gift. It means the audience loves the character so much that they forget the actor, and then they remember the actor because of the character. Matheus has lived with João Grilo ever since, and he has never resented it. He knows that a role like that comes once in a career, and he treats it as a gift.
City of God and Mango Yellow
The years after João Grilo brought more film work, and two films in particular showed how far his range could stretch. In 2002 he appeared in City of God, known in Portuguese as Cidade de Deus, directed by Fernando Meirelles, a film about the growth of a favela in Rio de Janeiro and the violence that consumes it. City of God became one of the most famous Brazilian films in the world, nominated for four Academy Awards, and watched by audiences everywhere. Matheus was part of its cast, and his presence in the film tied him to a landmark of Brazilian cinema. The film is brutal and beautiful, and it showed a Brazil that many viewers had never seen. Being in it meant being part of a story that changed how the world saw Brazilian film.
In the same year, 2002, he played in Mango Yellow, known in Portuguese as Amarelo Manga, directed by Cláudio Assis, a film set in the port city of Recife, in the northeast. The film is a portrait of people living on the edge: a butcher, a woman who runs a bar, a man who dreams of a better life. Matheus’s performance in the film won him the Best Actor award at the Cine Ceará festival in 2003, adding another prize to a shelf that was already full. Mango Yellow is a very different film from City of God. It is slower, stranger, and more poetic, and it asked Matheus to play a man whose desires are messy and whose life is falling apart. He did it with an honesty that made the character feel real, not like a symbol.
The two films together show the breadth of his work in a single year. One is a world-famous epic about violence in Rio. The other is a small, strange film about desire in Recife. Matheus was at home in both. He did not need a big budget or a famous director to do good work, and he did not need a small film to prove his seriousness. He moved between the two worlds easily, because his training had taught him that the work is the same wherever it happens: a character, a space, and the truth of the moment.
He also worked in television during these years, appearing in productions that brought his film work to a wider audience. He was in Hilda Furacão in 1998, and in Os Maias in 2001, and he kept returning to the stage. The pattern was steady. He did not chase a single kind of fame. He took the roles that interested him, in film, in television, and in theatre, and he let the work add up into a career that no one else in Brazil quite resembled.
A Dead Girl’s Feast, Directed by the Actor
In 2008, Matheus did something that few actors attempt: he directed his first feature film. A Festa da Menina Morta, known in English as The Dead Girl’s Feast, is a film about a family in the northeast of Brazil that holds a feast every year for a dead girl, a child who died long ago and whose memory shapes the family’s life. Matheus directed the film, and he also wrote the music for it. It was shown at film festivals, and it won him the Best Director award at the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, a remarkable achievement for a first-time director.
Directing is a different job from acting. An actor thinks about one character. A director thinks about every character, every shot, every sound, and the shape of the whole film. Matheus brought to directing the same care he brought to acting: a love for the northeast, a respect for the people in the story, and a patience with the rhythm of the film. The Dead Girl’s Feast is a slow film, full of ritual and memory, and it shows a director who trusts the audience to watch and to feel, without being told what to think.
The film also showed that Matheus’s interest in the northeast was not only about João Grilo. The region, its people, its faith, and its stories, had become a central part of his work as an artist. He had played a trickster from the northeast, and now he was directing a film about a family from the same region, about their grief and their rituals. The two works are connected, not by plot, but by a sensibility: a belief that the lives of ordinary people in the northeast are worth telling with care and with respect.
Directing gave him a new way of thinking about acting as well. A director knows what the camera needs, what the editor needs, and how a performance fits into a larger whole. When Matheus returned to acting after directing, he brought that knowledge with him. His later performances are more economical, more precise, and more aware of the film around them. He does not waste a gesture. He knows what the camera will see, and he gives it only what the scene needs. That discipline is the gift of directing, and it is visible in everything he has done since.
Renascer, Vale Tudo, and Grilo Again
The 2020s brought Matheus back to prime-time television and back to his most famous character. In 2024 he appeared in Renascer, a remake of a classic telenovela about a family in the cocoa region of Bahia, and he followed it with a part in the 2025 remake of Vale Tudo, one of the most famous telenovelas in Brazilian history. These were not small jobs. They were major productions, watched by millions, and they put him back in front of the television audience that had first met him as João Grilo. He took them in his stride, as he takes everything, with the same preparation and the same care he brings to a film or a play.
In the same year, 2024, he returned to the role that defined his career. O Auto da Compadecida 2 brought João Grilo back to the screen, more than twenty years after the first film. The sequel reunited the beloved characters, and Matheus played Grilo again, older now, with the same quick movements and the same sharp voice, but with a new depth that came from his own years of life. The audience welcomed him back, and the film was a success with Brazilian audiences, who had waited a long time to see Grilo and Chicó together again.
Playing the same character twenty-four years later is a strange experience for an actor. The body has changed. The voice has changed. The life behind the eyes has changed. Matheus did not try to pretend that nothing had happened. He let the years into the performance, and Grilo became a man who had lived, who had learned, and who was still scheming, still talking, still surviving. That is the honest way to return to a role, and the audience recognised it. They were not watching a copy of the old Grilo. They were watching Grilo, older, and still himself.
Today Matheus Nachtergaele continues to work in film, television, and theatre, and he remains one of the most respected character actors in Brazil. He has won the country’s biggest acting prizes twice, he has directed a film that won a directing prize, and he has created a character that belongs to the whole country. He did it without ever trying to be a leading man, without ever chasing the kind of fame that television gives its heroes. He did it by being good, role by role, in the theatre, in the cinema, and on the screen, and by disappearing into each character so completely that the audience remembers the person and forgets the actor. That is the highest praise a character actor can receive, and Matheus has earned it many times over.
My Take:
I think Matheus Nachtergaele is the actor in this group I would most want to watch work, not because he is the most famous, but because he is the most interesting to watch. Fame is easy to understand. Disappearing is harder. When Matheus plays a character, the actor goes away. You do not sit there thinking about Matheus Nachtergaele. You think about João Grilo, or about the man in Mango Yellow, or about the person on screen who is lying to you with a straight face. That disappearance is the whole job of a character actor, and most actors never learn it, because it requires giving up the thing actors want most: to be seen. Matheus gives it up gladly, role after role, and the audience loves him for it, even though they often remember the character’s name and forget his.
What I admire most is where he learned it. He learned it in Teatro da Vertigem, in a company that performed in hospitals and churches and prisons, with the audience standing close enough to touch the actors. There is no faking in a room like that. The people watching can see your breathing. They can see your hands. If you lie, they know. Matheus spent his early years in that honest place, and it made him honest as an actor. When he later played João Grilo, a man who lies constantly, the lies worked because the actor underneath them was truthful. That sounds like a contradiction, and it is, but it is the contradiction at the heart of great acting. The audience must believe the man, even when the man is lying, and Matheus makes them believe.
Livro de Jó is the part of his story I think about most, because it is the least famous and the most important. A young actor, in an experimental company, playing a role in a biblical story about suffering, in an unusual space, in front of an audience that is moving through the room with him. That is not a job you take for money or for fame. It is a job you take because you believe theatre matters, because you believe a story about a man arguing with God is worth telling. Matheus took that job, and he was recognised for it, and the recognition opened the door to film. But I think the play itself mattered more than the door it opened. It taught him that acting is about carrying a heavy story with stillness and with presence, and that lesson stayed with him through every film that followed.
João Grilo is the role everyone mentions, and I understand why, but I want to talk about the body, because that is where the performance lives. Matheus is a tall man, and he made Grilo skinny and wiry, a man whose body tells you he has never had enough to eat. He leans forward. He moves fast. His hands are always doing something. His eyes are always watching for the next chance. That is not a costume. It is a physical choice, made by an actor who learned on stage that a character lives in the body before it lives in the words. I have seen actors play tricksters by smiling and talking fast. Matheus plays a trickster by moving like a hungry man, and the difference is enormous. The smile can be faked. The hunger cannot, or at least not for two hours, in front of a camera that sees everything.
I also think about the two Grande Prêmio awards, because they tell me something about how his fellow professionals see him. The Grande Prêmio is voted on by people in the Brazilian film industry, and winning it once is a great honour. Winning it twice, for Midnight in 2000 and for O Auto da Compadecida in 2001, means that the people who make films in Brazil think you are the best actor in the country, two years in a row, for two completely different performances. One is dark and quiet. The other is fast and funny. The same actor, the same voters, two different verdicts, both the same: he is the best. That is a rare thing, and it is worth more than any box office number, because it comes from the people who know the work from the inside.
City of God and Mango Yellow, in the same year, show me the range that makes Matheus special. One is a world-famous film about violence in Rio, nominated for four Academy Awards. The other is a small, strange film about desire in Recife, seen by far fewer people. Matheus was at home in both. He did not need a big budget to do good work, and he did not need a small film to prove his seriousness. He moved between the two worlds easily, because his training had taught him that the work is the same wherever it happens. I wish more actors had that flexibility. Too many chase only the big films, or only the small ones, and they become prisoners of their own taste. Matheus refused to be a prisoner. He took the work that interested him, and the work added up into a career that no one else in Brazil quite resembles.
Directing The Dead Girl’s Feast is the part of his story that surprises people, and it should not. An actor who has spent years in experimental theatre, who has thought about space and ritual and audience, is already thinking like a director. The film is about a family that holds a feast every year for a dead girl, and it is slow, strange, and full of memory. It won him a directing prize at the Rio festival, which is a remarkable thing for a first film. But what interests me is not the prize. It is the subject. Matheus chose to direct a film about grief, about a family that cannot let go of a child, about the rituals people invent to live with loss. That is a brave subject for a first film, and it tells me that he is not interested in easy stories. He is interested in the stories that are hard to tell, and he trusts the audience to follow him into them.
I think about the return to João Grilo in 2024, because it is a strange and moving thing for an actor to do. Twenty-four years after the first film, Matheus put the character on again. His body had changed. His voice had changed. His life had changed. He did not try to hide any of that. He let the years into the performance, and Grilo became a man who had lived, who had learned, and who was still scheming. That is the honest way to return to a role, and the audience recognised it. They were not watching a copy. They were watching Grilo, older, and still himself. I admire that honesty, because the easy choice would have been to imitate the young man he was in 2000. He did not imitate. He inhabited, again, with everything he had learned since.
There is a lesson here for any young actor who wants to be a character actor rather than a leading man, and it is a hard lesson. The work is less glamorous. The pay is often less. The audience will remember your characters and forget your name. But the career lasts longer, and the work is richer, because you are never trapped in one image. Matheus has played a trickster, a man in a port city, a priest, a criminal, a father, and a fool, and he has been convincing in every one. A leading man who plays the same hero for twenty years will eventually bore the audience. A character actor who disappears into a new person every time will never bore them, because there is always someone new to meet. That is the freedom Matheus chose, and it is the reason his career is still growing in his fifties.
If I have a criticism, it is only that the world outside Brazil does not know him well enough. City of God is famous everywhere, but the man who played in it, and in Mango Yellow, and in O Auto da Compadecida, is still a secret to most viewers outside Brazil. That is a loss for the rest of the world, not for him. He has built his career where his audience is, in Brazil, in the theatre, in the cinema, and on television, and he has done it on his own terms. I hope the sequel to O Auto da Compadecida, and the streaming platforms that carry Brazilian films, bring his work to more people, because a talent like his deserves a wider audience.
What would I tell someone who has never seen his work and wants to start? I would say watch O Auto da Compadecida first, because João Grilo is the character that will make you laugh and make you understand what a trickster is. Then watch Mango Yellow, because it is the opposite kind of film, slow and strange, and it shows what Matheus can do when there is no joke to hide behind. Then watch The Dead Girl’s Feast, because it shows what he can do as a director, and it will change how you think about him. Three films, three different men, one behind the camera, and you will understand why his fellow actors voted him the best in Brazil twice.
In the end, I think Matheus Nachtergaele’s story is about a man who chose the harder path and never regretted it. He chose the theatre over television, the character over the hero, the small film over the easy hit, and the director’s chair over the comfort of only acting. He disappeared into his characters so completely that the audience remembers them and forgets him, and that forgetting is the highest praise a character actor can receive. The boy from São Paulo who learned to act in hospitals and churches is still working, still disappearing, still surprising people, and still proving that the best acting is the acting you do not notice, because the person on screen feels real.
I want to say more about the northeast of Brazil, because it runs through Matheus’s work like a thread, and I think it is the key to understanding him as an artist. João Grilo comes from the northeast. The Dead Girl’s Feast is set in the northeast. Mango Yellow is set in Recife, in the northeast. That is not a coincidence. Matheus is a man from São Paulo, from the biggest city in the south, and yet the stories he keeps returning to are the stories of the northeast: its tricksters, its faith, its rituals, its people. He does not treat the region as a colourful background. He treats it as a place with its own logic, its own humour, and its own dignity. That respect matters, because Brazilian cinema has a long history of using the northeast as a backdrop for other people’s stories. Matheus tells the region’s stories as if they belong to the people who live there, and that is why they feel true.
There is also the music. When Matheus directed The Dead Girl’s Feast, he wrote the music for it as well, and that detail tells me something about how he thinks. A director who writes the music is a director who hears the film, not only sees it. He knows that a story about a feast for a dead girl needs sound as much as it needs images: the sound of a ritual, of a family gathering, of a memory being kept alive. I think that musical sense comes from the theatre, where sound and silence are part of the performance, and where an actor learns to listen as carefully as he speaks. It is another sign that Matheus thinks about a film as a whole, not as a collection of scenes, and that wholeness is what makes his directing feel so assured for a first film.
I also want to think about the difference between stage and screen in his work, because he has lived in both worlds and he understands what each one demands. On stage, the actor must reach the back row. The gestures are bigger, the voice is louder, the energy is higher. On screen, the camera is close, and a small movement is enough. Many theatre actors fail on screen because they cannot shrink their performance. Many screen actors fail on stage because they cannot enlarge it. Matheus does both, and he does it by changing the scale without changing the truth. João Grilo on screen is fast and physical, but the energy is contained, fitted to the camera. Job on stage was still and heavy, fitted to a room full of people standing close. The ability to change scale like that is a technical skill, and it is one of the reasons directors trust him with such different kinds of work.
For a young actor who wants to be a character actor, I would point to Matheus and say this: learn the stage first, because the stage will teach you the body, the voice, and the truth. Do not worry about being the hero. Worry about being the person. Take the small film and the big film, because both will teach you something. And do not be afraid to direct, because directing will teach you what a film needs from an actor, and that knowledge will make your acting better. Matheus did all of that, and the result is a career that has lasted more than thirty years and is still finding new characters to play. That is the reward for choosing the harder path, and it is a reward worth working for.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Matheus Nachtergaele born?
Matheus Nachtergaele was born on 3 January 1968 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He grew up in the largest city in the country, and he began his career in theatre before moving into film and television. He has now been working as an actor for more than thirty years, and he is one of the most respected character actors in Brazil.
What is Matheus Nachtergaele best known for?
He is best known for playing Joao Grilo in O Auto da Compadecida, a film from 2000 about two poor men from the northeast of Brazil. The film became one of the most loved Brazilian films of all time, and Joao Grilo became one of its most loved characters. Matheus returned to the role in O Auto da Compadecida 2 in 2024, more than twenty years later.
Did Matheus Nachtergaele direct films?
Yes, he has worked as a director as well as an actor, taking on projects that matter to him and telling stories in his own way. Directing asks a person to think about the whole story, not only one part, and Matheus has shown that he can do that. He is known as an artist who cares about honest, funny, and carefully told Brazilian stories.
What kind of actor is Matheus Nachtergaele?
He is known as a character actor, a man who can disappear into many different roles rather than playing the same leading man again and again. He has played clowns, priests, criminals, fathers, and fools, and he has made them all feel real. That range is rare, and it is one of the reasons he is so respected by other actors and directors.
Was Matheus Nachtergaele in O Auto da Compadecida 2?
Yes, he returned to play Joao Grilo in O Auto da Compadecida 2 in 2024, more than twenty years after the first film. The sequel brought back the beloved characters from the original, and Matheus played Joao Grilo with the same warmth and humour, but with a new depth that came from his own years of life. The film was a success with Brazilian audiences.
Is Matheus Nachtergaele still acting?
Yes, he is still acting and directing, and he continues to be one of the most respected artists in Brazil. His return as Joao Grilo in 2024 brought him new attention, and he remains active in film, television, and theatre. His career has lasted for more than thirty years, and he is still finding new characters to play.
