Benicio Del Toro
Benicio Del Toro
Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sanchez, known professionally as Benicio Del Toro, is a Puerto Rican actor. He has won an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of Javier Rodríguez in the film Traffic. He is also known for his roles as Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects, Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Franky Four Fingers in Snatch, Jackie Boy in Sin City, Che Guevara in Che,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth19 February 1967
CitySan Juan, PR
CountryUnited States of America
Before I was even in high school, I had dark circles under my eyes. Rumor was that I was a junkie. I have dark circles under my eyes, deal with it.
I won and I get to scream and jump a little. But I got to go back to work tomorrow.
I trained as a theatre actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by.
I don't see the world completely in black and white. Sometimes I do.
To be honest with you, I'd rather not be working. When you work, there are all sorts of deadlines and pressures. I like to do one thing and take my time to do the other one.
I've played drug dealers, all my life. I've made a career of killing people and playing all kinds of killers. The violence and drugs is portrayed in exaggeration. This is fiction. That is how I looked at it. And, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Just open a newspaper.
There's a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too.
The very first things that I did, even in theater, were bad guys. They are meaty roles for the most part. With the bad guy you have more freedom to experiment and go further out than with a good guy.
I've had people ask me: 'How can you make a movie about a murderer? A terrorist?' What they don't understand is that I'm in support of everyone who appears on screen. I have to be. I take the position of everyone who's on screen. I'm not judging them one way or another.
I'm a fan myself, so when a fan does something that might be strange, I understand it.
Villains used to always die in the end. Even the monsters. Frankenstein, Dracula - you'd kill them with a stake. Now the nightmare guy comes back.
I'm not Jack Nicholson. I'm not Brando. But I do mumble.
I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.
It's funny, but when I arrived in California to start college I was much more interested in becoming a surfer and cruise along in life from one beach to the next. I didn't plan out any huge career for myself.