Benicio Del Toro (2000                  

 Nominated for: Best Supporting Actor (Traffic)

Won:

Best Supporting Actor

Biography:

       When Benicio Del Toro first announced to his father and siblings that he intended to pursue a career in acting, they didn't take the news very well. As Del Toro told one interviewer, "My family freaked when I told them I wanted to be an actor. It was like telling them I wanted to be an astronaut. On top of that, it was like saying that in order to be an astronaut, I was going to have to drive a cab in New York for five years." The family probably felt that its worst fears had been realized when Del Toro won his first movie role, playing "Duke the Dog-Faced Boy," in the ill-contrived sequel to Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Big Top Pee-Wee. Undaunted by the execrable effort, Del Toro stuck it out, and over the course of the next several years, he paid the bills with a steady stream of supporting roles, both in films and on television, including several memorable portrayals of drug-dealing heavies. His career caught fire with the role of enunciation-challenged con man Fred Fenster in Bryan Singer's stunning ensemble crime drama The Usual Suspects (1995), a performance for which he won an Independent Spirit Best Supporting Actor award; he won the same award the following year for his work in the critically lauded biopic Basquiat. With a résumé comprised in equal measures of mainstream fare and independent projects, Del Toro is uniquely positioned to become a draw both at the box office and on the film-festival circuit.

        Blessed with the exotic, sleepy-eyed good looks of "James Dean channeling Ricardo Montalban," to invoke the description of one critic, Del Toro was born to lawyer parents in Puerto Rico. Following the death of his mother, Del Toro's father moved the family to a farm in southern Pennsylvania. Although he developed a healthy interest in acting as a child, Del Toro made plans to enter the family business--his parents, his grandfather, his godmother, and his uncle had all been practicing attorneys at some point. Following high school, he enrolled at the University of California in San Diego to study business. An acting class taken during his freshman year rekindled his yen to perform, and the would-be lawyer dropped out of college and spent the next couple of years studying acting, both in New York, where he attended the noted Circle in the Square Acting School, and in Los Angeles, where he trained under famed acting guru Stella Adler. Like many of his peers, Del Toro got his start in the business doing guest-starring roles on television. He appeared in such short-lived series as Shell Game and O'Hara; in 1987, he showed up in an episode of Miami Vice, and in 1990, he logged his first major screen time, in the role of a sinister drug lord in the acclaimed NBC miniseries Drug Wars: The Kiki Camarena Story.

       While his TV career was off to a modestly successful start, Del Toro had a tougher go of it on the silver screen. He followed up his forgettable Pee-Wee debut with a role in the mediocre James Bond flick License To Kill (1989). Two years later, he snagged a small part in Sean Penn's warmly received directorial debut effort, The Indian Runner. Del Toro received his next paycheck for his performance as a thoroughly despicable rapist in the laughably awful Christopher Columbus-as-swashbuckler debacle Christopher Columbus: The Discovery. In spite of such career dead-ends, the game young actor managed to stay afloat with convincing supporting performances in such creditable dramas as Fearless and China Moon. His persistence was finally rewarded in 1995: the year began with a small role alongside Kevin Spacey in the bitter-pill Hollywood satire Swimming With Sharks, in which Del Toro delivered the memorable line, "This is not a business, this is show business. Punching below the belt is not only all right, it's rewarded." The two then reteamed for The Usual Suspects, in which Del Toro stood out amid the sparkling ensemble cast with his hilariously unintelligible lines.

       In 1996, Del Toro parlayed his newfound celebrity into substantial roles in three films. He resurrected the oft-donned gangster persona of his early career to play a vengeful crime lord in Abel Ferrara's noirish art-house crime drama The Funeral, and then turned in a well-received portrayal of Benny Dalmau, faithful friend to the late American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, in Basquiat. Del Toro appeared in the film for free as a favor to painter and first-time director Julian Schnabel, a close personal friend of his. To stay afloat financially, Del Toro accepted the role of a self-obsessed baseball player who dies at the hands of a psychotic knife salesman (played by the Grand Poobah of all nutcase portrayers, Robert De Niro) in the half-baked baseball thriller The Fan. Del Toro managed to put the experience behind him by landing his first starring role, opposite It-girl Alicia Silverstone, in the 1997 kidnap farce Excess Baggage. Silverstone, who pulled double-duty as both the film's leading lady and producer, handpicked Del Toro to play her romantic counterpart after being wowed by his turn in The Usual Suspects.

        Now living in Los Angeles, Del Toro maintains a low profile between movies, and has thus far managed to avoid becoming entangled in any celebrity romances. His screenwriting and directing debut short Submission, which starred a pre-celebrity Matthew McConaughey, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1995. The fledgling filmmaker would like to direct again at some point, but has said of himself, "I get quite embarrassed with my acting when I see it on the screen. I would imagine with a film that's my own, I'd be really embarrassed and have to leave the country." While he may not get behind the camera again anytime soon, he's spent plenty of time in front of it: 1998 brought a role as lawyer and Hunter S. Thompson confidante Oscar Acosta in the Terry Gilliam-directed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; and Del Toro had a banner year in 2000, with his Golden Globe-winning supporting performance in Steven Soderbergh's drug war-focused drama Traffic, and his co-starring turn in Guy Ritchie's well-received crime caper Snatch.

Some Pictures of Benicio :

Contact Me