Spanish cinema

Benicio del Toro 

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-WeeÆs 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.

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- and Oscar-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.

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