Benicio del Toro

Benicio del Toro
Benicio del Toro at Cannes 2008
Born	Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez February 19, 1967 (1967-02-19) (age 43) Santurce, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Occupation	Actor/Producer
Years active	1987–present

Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez (born February 19, 1967), better known as Benicio del Toro, is a Puerto Rican actor and film producer. His awards include the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award and British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award. He is known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects, Javier Rodríguez in Traffic (his Oscar-winning role), Jack 'Jackie Boy' Rafferty in Sin City, Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Franky Four Fingers in Snatch , Che Guevara in Che, and most recently for his role as Lawrence Talbot in The Wolfman. He is the third Puerto Rican to win an Academy Award.

Early life

Benicio del Toro was born and grew up in Santurce, Puerto Rico, a district of San Juan. He is the son of Gustavo Adolfo del Toro Bermúdez and Fausta Genoveva Sánchez Rivera, who were both lawyers.^[1] He is of Spanish and Italian ancestry.^[2] He has an older brother, Gustavo, who is a pediatric oncologist at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.^[3][4] Del Toro's childhood nicknames were "Skinny Benny" and "Beno". He was raised a Roman Catholic^[5] and attended Academia del Perpetuo Socorro (The Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Help), a Roman Catholic school in Miramar, Puerto Rico.^[6][7] When he was nine years old, his mother died of hepatitis.^[3] At age 12, del Toro's father moved with his two sons to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where del Toro was enrolled at the Mercersburg Academy. He spent his adolescence and attended high school there.^[8]

After graduation, del Toro followed the advice of his father and pursued a degree in business at the University of California, San Diego.^[8] Success in an elective drama course encouraged him to drop out of college and study with noted acting teachers Stella Adler and Arthur Mendoza, in Los Angeles, as well as at the Circle in the Square Theatre School, in New York City.^[8]

Career

Del Toro began to surface in small television parts during the late 1980s, playing mostly thugs and drug dealers on programs like Miami Vice and the NBC miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story. He had a cameo in Madonna's 1987 music video clip "La Isla Bonita" as a background character (the kid sitting on the car). Work in films followed, beginning with his debut in Big Top Pee-wee and in the 007 film Licence to Kill,^[8] in which 21-year-old del Toro held the distinction of being the youngest actor ever to play a Bond villain. Although both films were considered box office disappointments, del Toro continued to appear in movies like The Indian Runner (1991), China Moon (1994), Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), Money for Nothing (1993), Fearless (1993) and Swimming with Sharks (1994).

His career gained momentum in 1995 with his breakout performance in The Usual Suspects, where he played the mumbling, wisecracking Fred Fenster.^[8] The role won him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor and established him as a character actor. This led to more strong roles in independent and major studio films, including playing Gaspare in Abel Ferrara's The Funeral (1996) and winning a second consecutive Best Supporting Actor Independent Spirit Award for his work as Benny Dalmau in Basquiat (1996), directed by his friend, artist Julian Schnabel. Del Toro also shared the screen with Robert De Niro in the big budget thriller The Fan, in which he played Juan Primo, a charismatic Puerto Rican baseball star.

For Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the 1998 film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's famous book, he packed on more than 40 lbs. (about 18 kg) to play Dr. Gonzo (a.k.a. Oscar Zeta Acosta), Thompson's lawyer and drug-fiend cohort.^[8] The surrealistic film, directed by Terry Gilliam, has earned a cult following over the years. Returning from a two-year hiatus after Fear and Loathing, del Toro would gain a mainstream audience in 2000 with a string of performances in four high-profile films. First up was The Way of the Gun, a crime yarn that reunited him with The Usual Suspects screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, making his directorial debut. A few months later, he stood out among a first-rate ensemble cast in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, a complex dissection of the North American drug wars. As Javier Rodriguez — a Mexican border cop struggling to remain honest amid the corruption and deception of illegal drug trafficking — del Toro, who spoke most of his lines in Spanish, gave a performance that dominated the film and earned him his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.^[8]

His praised work swept all of the major critics awards in 2001, as well as the Golden Globe, and the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. In addition to the critical accolades, Traffic was also a success at the box office, bringing to del Toro real Hollywood clout for the first time in his career. While Traffic was still playing in theaters, two other del Toro films were released in late 2000/early 2001. He had a brief role as the diamond thief Franky Four Fingers in Guy Ritchie's hip caper comedy Snatch, and played a mentally-challenged Native American man in The Pledge, directed by his old friend Sean Penn.^[8]

Benicio del Toro depicting revolutionary Che Guevara in the 2008 film Che. Del Toro was awarded the Best Actor Award at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and the 2009 Goya Award as the best Spanish Lead Actor for his role in the two-part biopic.

In 2003, del Toro appeared in two films: The Hunted, co-starring Tommy Lee Jones, and the drama 21 Grams, an acting tour-de-force, co-starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. He went on to garner another Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work in the latter.

His most recent roles were in the film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel Sin City, directed by Robert Rodriguez, and Things We Lost in the Fire, the English language debut of celebrated Danish director Susanne Bier. Things We Lost in the Fire co-starred Halle Berry, Alison Lohman, and John Carroll Lynch.

In 2008, del Toro was awarded the Prix d'interpretation masculine (or Best Actor Award) for his characterization of Che Guevara in The Argentine and Guerrilla (together known as Che).^[9] During his acceptance speech del Toro dedicated his award "to the man himself, Che Guevara" along with director Steven Soderbergh.^[10] Del Toro was also awarded a 2009 Goya Award as the best Spanish Lead Actor for his depiction of Che.^[11] Actor Sean Penn, who won an Oscar for his role in Milk, remarked that he was surprised and disappointed that Che and del Toro were not also up for any Academy Award nominations. During his acceptance speech for the Best Actor's trophy at the Screen Actors Guild Awards Penn expressed his dismay stating, "The fact that there aren't crowns on Soderbergh's and Del Toro's heads right now, I don't understand ... that is such a sensational movie, Che."^[12] For the final portions of the film (shown here), del Toro shed 35 pounds to show how ill Guevara had become near the end of his life in the jungles of Bolivia.^[13]

Del Toro starred in and produced the remake of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s classic cult film The Wolf Man.^[14] Benicio will be in Martin Scorsese's "Silence" with Daniel Day-Lewis and Gael García Bernal, due to be released in 2010. Filming began late 2009, in New Zealand.

Del Toro signed an endorsement deal with Magnum (ice cream) and appears in a television commercial alongside Caroline Correa advertisting "Magnum Gold" ice cream.

He is scheduled to be part of the jury at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May.^[15]

Academy Award

In 2001, del Toro won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Traffic, becoming the fourth living Oscar winner whose winning role was a character who speaks predominantly in a foreign language (most of del Toro's dialogue in Traffic is in Spanish). Del Toro is also the third Puerto Rican actor to win an Oscar, after Jose Ferrer and Rita Moreno.^[8] The night he won his Oscar, it was the first time that two actors born in Puerto Rico were nominated in the same category. (The other actor was Joaquin Phoenix, who isn't of Puerto Rican descent.) In his acceptance speech, del Toro thanked the people of both Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora and dedicated his award to them. In 2004, Benicio del Toro was again nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, for his performance in the film 21 Grams.

Filmography

Films

Short films

TV-Series

Awards

This list includes some awards of Benicio del Toro:

See also

• List of Best Supporting Actor nominees
• List of Puerto Ricans
• List of James Bond villains
• List of Navy-Vieques protesters and supporters
• List of Puerto Rican Academy Award winners and nominees

References

External links

• Benicio del Toro at the Internet Movie Database
• This Is My Life: Benicio Del Toro - Miami Herald (October 10, 1997)
• All About Benicio - Biography
• Benicio Del Toro on 'Che': Man on a Mission
• Benicio Del Toro Gets to the Man Behind the T-Shirt Myth in "Che"
• The World of Benicio del Toro