Benicio del Toro

Steven Otfinoski

Description

Success didn't come easily to award-winning Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro. He experienced constant rejections in auditions for roles when he first started to pursue an acting career. It wasn't until he moved to Los Angeles that he started getting parts, starting with small ones in films like Big Top Pee Wee and eventually leading to a breakout role in The Usual Suspects. When he won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his role in the movie Traffic, he was only the third Puerto Rican American to win an acting Oscar. Read all about del Toro in this full-color biography.

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• Actuación
• Puerto Rican
• Award
• Producer
• Performing arts
• International
• Art performance
• Actor
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438197937
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Benicio del Toro
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Contents Chapters A Night to Remember From Puerto Rico to Pennsylvania A Struggling Actor The Unusual Suspect "An Acting Animal" From Super Villain to Superhero Support Materials Timeline Selected Filmography Further Resources Bibliography About the Author Learn More About Miramar, San Juan Stella Adler Steven Soderbergh
Chapters
A Night to Remember
On the evening of March 23, 2001, actor Benicio del Toro sat nervously in his seat at the Academy Awards ceremony in the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, as actress Angeline Jolie stepped out on the stage. She announced the nominated actors for the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Benicio was nominated for his portrayal of a Mexican border patrol officer with a conscience in the epic film about drug smuggling, Traffic . Del Toro's competition for the award was impressive, including William Dafoe, Albert Finney, Jeff Bridges and Joaquin Phoenix. Jolie opened the envelope and read his name. Del Toro was stunned. He rose to his feet amid the thunderous applause, hugged Traffic 's director Steven Sonderbergh and headed down the aisle to the stage.
"[S]tanding up there, looking out at the crowd and everywhere you look you see Dustin Hoffman and everyone," del Toro later recalled to Stephen Head in IGN. "That's really shocking. That's my memory when I was up in there—looking down and seeing Dustin Hoffman." 
After thanking Soderbergh and the movie's producers in his brief acceptance speech, del Toro dedicated his award to two of the film's locations—Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico, border towns where the dangers of the drug trafficking depicted in the movie were a grim reality. 

Benicio del Toro wins Best Supporting Actor at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards, 2001.
Source: Shutterstock.
While the Oscar was important to del Toro's career, it also was important to the Puerto Rican community in the United States that he represented. He became only the third Puerto Rican American to win an acting Oscar, following Jose Ferrer (Best Actor) for the title role in Cyrano De Bergerac (1950) and Rita Moreno (Best Supporting Actress) for her portrayal of the fiery Anita in West Side Story (1961). Only two other Latino actors have won acting Oscars to date—Mexican-American Anthony Quinn and Cuban-American Mercedes Ruehl. 
While this was del Toro's first nomination for an Oscar, at age 35 he was a 15-year veteran of acting in movies and television. Some of those years had been a struggle to survive in a tough and unforgiving business. It was a business he had nearly given up on. 
From Puerto Rico to Pennsylvania
Benicio Monsurat Rafael del Toro Sanchez was born on February 19, 1967 in San German, Puerto Rico. He has one sibling, a brother Gustavo, two years his senior. 
A Family of Lawyers 
Benicio was born into a distinguished family. Both his parents were lawyers, as were his godmother, grandfather and uncle. His mother, Fausta Geneoveva Sanchez Rivera, came from a well-to-do family in San Juan, the capital city of Puerto Rico. His maternal great-grandfather, Rafael Rivera Esbis, helped to put out the infamous El Polvairan fire in the city of Ponce in 1899, and 16 years later was elected Ponce's mayor. Benicio's father, Gustavo Adolfo del Toro Bermudez, came from a more humble family in the rural area of San German. Gustavo's father had been a policeman and Gustavo served in the military before becoming a lawyer. 
The family moved to Miramar, an upscale suburb of San Juan, where Benicio attended the Catholic Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Help with the children of other professionals. Basketball was his passion and he filled the walls of his bedroom with posters of his favorite pro players.

View from Miramar, San Juan, across the lagoon towards Condado
Source: Javier Rodriguez Galarza
A Loss 
His mother Fausta contracted hepatitis when Benicio was still very young. "My childhood is kind of like a contradiction," del Toro told Alex Bilmes in an interview for Esquire . "It was a bad childhood because we knew that our mom was dying… And at the same time there was a sense of happiness around the house. My mom had a great sense of humor. There was a sense of looking at what was coming straight in the face and at the same time just enjoying life." 
He remembers the kindness of people at this difficult time, especially his kindergarten teacher.