As a young actor, Benicio Del Toro earned comparisons to Marlon Brando with his smoldering style and muscular, sullen good looks. His best-known early roles included the ill-fated Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects (1995), Vincent Roche in the Alicia Silverstone vehicle Excess Baggage (1997) and Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998, with Johnny Depp). In 2000 he played Mexican cop Javier Rodriguez Rodriguez in Steven Soderbergh's drug smuggling drama Traffic; the role won Del Toro a Screen Actors Guild award, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award as best supporting actor. His other films include Snatch (2000, starring Brad Pitt), The Hunted (2003, with Tommy Lee Jones) 21 Grams (2004, with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts), Sin City (2005, with Jessica Alba and Bruce Willis) and Things We Lost in the Fire (2008, with Halle Berry). He also played Che Guevara in the 2008 biopic Che.
Del Toro's first real acting job was as a guest star in the TV series Miami Vice.
Career Highlights: Traffic, Swimming With Sharks, The Funeral
First Major Screen Credit: Money for Nothing (1993)
Biography
Known for his dark intensity and idiosyncratic performances, Benicio Del Toro became one of Hollywood's more unique actors. His looks suggesting a hidden background as Wednesday Addams' hunky older brother, he first became known to film audiences in 1995 with his breakthrough performance in The Usual Suspects. Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1967, Del Toro was the son of lawyers. His mother died when he was nine, and, four years later, his father moved the family to Mercersberg, PA, where they lived on a farm. While attending the University of California at San Diego, where he was working toward a business degree, Del Toro took an acting class and was soon hooked. He appeared in a number of student productions, one of which led to a stint performing at a drama festival at New York's Lafayette Theatre. Del Toro decided to remain in New York to study acting at the Circle in the Square Acting School and won a scholarship to the Stella Adler Conservatory.
A move to Los Angeles, where he studied at the Actors Circle Theatre, led to Del Toro's first television roles, which included a guest spot on Miami Vice and an appearance as a drug dealer on the miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story (1990). The actor also began showing up in feature films, perhaps most notably as Duke the Dog-Faced Boy in Big Top Pee-Wee (1988). Despite fairly steady work, Del Toro was still virtually unknown when he was cast as the eccentric criminal Fenster in Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects. His slurred, otherworldly performance earned widespread praise, an Independent Spirit Award, and, coupled with the film's great success, Del Toro was soon thrust into the limelight that had hitherto eluded him. The actor followed up The Usual Suspects with a supporting role as the titular artist's best friend in Julian Schnabel's Basquiat (1996). Despite intriguing subject matter and a stellar cast, the film was something of a critical and commercial disappointment, although Del Toro's work did earn him a second Independent Spirit Award. Having thus put his trademark on offbeat character acting -- something that was also helped by his role as a gangster in Abel Ferrara's The Funeral (1996) -- Del Toro played a romantic lead opposite Alicia Silverstone in Excess Baggage (1997). A botched caper comedy that cast the actor as a bumbling car thief, the film, unfortunately, turned out to be an indisputable turkey.
Not nearly as disastrous, though courting an intensely mixed critical reception, was Del Toro's next film, Terry Gilliam's much anticipated 1998 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A drug-addled, hallucinatory odyssey, it starred Del Toro as Dr. Gonzo, protagonist Raoul Duke's (Johnny Depp basically playing Thompson) partner in crime. Del Toro earned strong notices for his portrayal of the portly, freewheeling, Samoan lawyer (based on real-life Thompson cohort Oscar Acosta), and his performance was widely touted as one of the best aspects of the film. Del Torogained further notice when he won several awards -- including the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe and Oscar -- for his role as a Mexican cop entangled in the international drug-trade war in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000). The next year, Del Toro played a retarded man wrongly accused of murder in director Sean Penn's sad tale of obsession, The Pledge, and earned his second Academy Award nomination for his performance in21 Grams in 2003. Del Toro made his directorial debut in 2004, reuniting with Depp for an adaptation of another Hunter Thompson book, The Rum Diaries. He was also cast to star in Che, Terrence Malick's biopic about Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, the production of which was postponed in 2004. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
After graduation, del Toro followed the advice of his father and pursued a degree in business at the University of California, San Diego.[5] 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.[5]
His career gained momentum in 1995 with his breakout performance in The Usual Suspects, where he played the mumbling, wisecracking Fred Fenster.[5] 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.[5] 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'sTraffic, 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.[5]
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-challengedNative American man in The Pledge, directed by his old friend Sean Penn.[5]
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.
Benicio will be in Martin Scorsese's "Silence" with Daniel-Day Lewis and Gael Garcia Bernal, due to be released in 2010. Filming will begin late 2009 in New Zealand. The movie is about two Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues (Benicio Del Toro) and Fr. Francisco Garpe(Gael Garcia Bernal), who travel to seventeenth century Japan (disguised as civilians) under the Shogunate regime (which has isolated itself from all foreign contact) to see how the evangelical mission is going and to find their mentor Fr. Cristóvão Ferreira (Daniel Day Lewis) who is accused of practicing apostasy. There they witness the persecution of Japanese Christians at the hands of their own government, which wishes to purge Japan of all Western influence. Eventually the priests separate and Rodrigues travels the countryside, wondering why God remains silent while His children suffer.
Academy Award
In 2001, del Toro won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Traffic, becoming the fourth 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). Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro, and Roberto Benigni are the other three (Marion Cotillard became the fifth winner, and Penélope Cruz the sixth, of an Academy Award for a character who speaks in a foreign language). Del Toro is also the third Puerto Rican actor to win an Oscar, after Jose Ferrer and Rita Moreno.[5] 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 for his role in Gladiator.) In his acceptance speech, del Toro thanked the people of both Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora and dedicated his award to them. Angelina Jolie handed the award to him. [7] In 2004, Benicio del Toro was again nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, for his performance in the film 21 Grams.
