Manuel María Arias Domínguez was born in Riaño, province of León, on 26 April 1956 but soon moved to Ermua, Biscay, where he was raised.

[2] Imanol Arias began his career with a travelling theatre group performing in the Basque Country of northern Spain.

[3] In 1987 he won the prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival for the role of Eleuterio Sánchez in El Lute: Run for Your Life (1987).

In 2013 Arias worked on the Spanish dubbing of the video game Battlefield 4 as Captain Roland Garrison.

[8][9][10] On 7 April 2016, Imanol Arias was accused of tax evasion and money laundering in the Panama Papers scandal as the owner of an offshore company, Trekel Trading Limited, based on the island nation of Niue that held a bank account under his complete control at the Swiss bank Banque Franck SA.