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Benicio Del Toro: Call of the Wild

BENICIO DEL TORO IS KNOWN FOR TAKING HIS ROLES VERY SERIOUSLY—SOMETIMES, HIS METHODS CAN SEEM A BIT EXTREME. WILL HIS PERFORMANCE IN NEXT MONTH’S THE WOLFMAN BE HIS WILDEST YET?
by Sian Thatcher - January 2010

Published in :: Features

No one could accuse Benicio Del Toro of lacking commitment. For every role he takes on he transforms himself, delving into the dark, murky worlds his characters usually occupy. How many other actors are dedicated enough to, or gain an obscene amount of weight for a part? Del Toro has done all these things and more.

At the time of this interview, Del Toro has an impressive amount of hair—fitting since he plays the title character in next month’s The Wolfman. Dressed head to toe in black, with a chunk of silver fashioned into the shape of a lion’s head on one finger, he holds a tiny espresso cup in his hand and looks off into space, contemplating his latest look.

While he admits that people have reacted differently to him with all the facial hair, it doesn’t compare to his past guises. “I did a small part in The Pledge, directed by Sean Penn, and I had really long hair and a weird hairdo around my mouth,” he says. “I really got strange reactions from locals; they stayed away from me.”

Born in Puerto Rico to a family of lawyers and raised in Pennsylvania, Del Toro was encouraged from an early age to follow in his relatives’ footsteps. Instead, he chose a degree in business at the University of California, San Diego, and only dabbled in drama to make his college schedule easier.

“I didn’t want to take another math or reading class, so I just thought, ‘Acting 101, I’ll take that. It can’t be that hard,’” he says. “I started learning a little bit, and there was a logic to it. I realized it wasn’t just hit or miss, and that’s the moment that I said, ‘You know what, I could do this. Why shouldn’t I?’ I can have fun and maybe make a living.”

Much to the disappointment of his family, he dropped out of college to study with the legendary Stella Adler at Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York. He took bit parts after he completed his training—a young, brooding Del Toro can be seen in “Miami Vice” and a music video for Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita.” Film work soon followed, and, at the age of 21, he became one of the youngest actors ever to play a Bond villain when he starred in Licence To Kill (1989).

Even so, it was Del Toro’s turn as mumbling Fred Fenster in 1995’s The Usual Suspects that really pushed his career into overdrive. The industry saw him as the intense character actor he is today—and his parents started to take his career seriously.

“As I got a little bit more recognition, and I won an Independent Spirit Award for The Usual Suspects, that was the moment they started to support me,” he says. “But even after that success, I remember my godmother saying, ‘You know, you could study law now. You could have a law degree down the line if you stop getting up at 11 and get up at 9 instead…’ She was always like that, just striving for more.”

Del Toro also wanted more—acting roles, that is. So much so, that for the part of Dr. Gonzo in 1998’s Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas (based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson), he gained more than 40 pounds and burned himself with cigarettes for a scene. A few feared for his health.

“The burning of the cigarettes was something that I learned about Dr. Gonzo through Hunter S. Thompson,” he says. “He knew Oscar Acosta, who the character is based on. I learned he used to do that just to freak people out. He’d go, ‘Where’s the ashtray?’ [Del Toro pretends to stub a cigarette on his arm]. ‘Anyone have an ashtray?’”

It’s not every day an actor feels compelled to cause harm to his own body for a role. But for Del Toro, it felt right at the time. “To be honest, I wouldn’t do it again,” he says. “No, it’s part of growing up as an actor. Actors do that stuff when they’re trying to define themselves or find themselves. I think not doing it would be a sign of maturity. But then again, I just did it because I felt like the guy needed to do something to freak people out. I was inside an elevator, I had a cigarette, couldn’t move, there were a lot of people, so I thought I would freak people out in that moment. But it didn’t make it in the film.”

It seems the film took quite a toll on the actor, who went on a two-year hiatus after its release. He returned to the big screen in 2000, appearing in Snatch, The Way of the Gun and the much-fêted, Steven Soderbergh-directed Traffic, which cemented his future in Hollywood. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Javier Rodriguez, a Mexican border cop struggling to remain honest amid illegal drug trafficking. In 2004, he was nominated for the same award for 21 Grams.

Del Toro paired up with Soderbergh again in 2008 to play the title role in Che, the ambitious film about the revolutionary. Although the Oscar-winning director has an impressive track record, making this movie came with some risks: Not only was Del Toro playing one of the most iconic—and controversial—figures in modern history, making him subject to much scrutiny, but the film also ran more than four hours long. (It was released simultaneously as two films.) Challenges aside, it was a chance of a lifetime for the actor, who’d been fascinated by the revolutionary as a college student.

“I didn’t find out about Che until I was 20,” he says. “I bought a book, a collection of letters he had written to his family in his 20s. That was the first thing I read by him, and I was completely hooked. The way he wrote, the simplicity, the way he made fun of himself, the way he talked about injustice, the way he wanted to help—he was a terrific writer.”

Despite being passionate about the character, Del Toro admits it was a demanding and exhausting role. “It was the most grueling film I’ve done,” he says. “At one point, I had to fight with a mule. Pulling her and trying to get her to do stuff was not easy. There were little moments of that—like rolling down a hill with no stunt guys. After we did it the first time, it was like, ‘Oops, I need a pad, because we’re not going to get through this one more time.’”

After making Che, which earned Del Toro the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, making The Wolfman, a remake of the 1941 classic, was a sigh of relief—even though the role required hours of makeup each day. “When you’re doing a historical figure, if you’re gonna make a choice, you have to read a book, see what he did, see if that moment was real and all that stuff. But when you’re doing The Wolfman, if you have to make a choice, you can invent anything, so it’s much easier,” says Del Toro, who plays the haunted nobleman Lawrence Talbot who, while in pursuit of his brother’s killer, is bitten and cursed by a werewolf.

Covered in hair, this chameleon-like actor has proved that he’s willing to endure anything—hours of makeup, self-inflicted cigarette burns, gaining 40 pounds—for his roles. And it’s this commitment that makes Del Toro stand out in a crowd—well, that and his frequently wild hairdos.

 

To the Extreme

Often unrecognizable from one part to the next, Del Toro always gives his all for a role.

THE HUNTED

While wrestling for a knife with Tommy Lee Jones, Del Toro broke his wrist. Production was halted while he had surgery and didn’t resume for five months. He had to endure three hours of daily therapy and still doesn’t have full use of his wrist.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

Del Toro gained more than 40 pounds for his role as Dr. Gonzo, and burned his arms with cigarettes for a scene. He claims the role hampered his career for some time. “For a while I couldn’t get a job. People thought I’d turned into a drunken, fat slob.”

THE WOLFMAN

Del Toro endured a hefty makeover every day: three hours of makeup in the morning, and an hour to remove it. Six-time Academy Award-winning makeup artist Rick Baker was in charge of the transformation, which involved a wig, a latex facial piece, dentures and hairs glued on to his face one by one.

CHE

Del Toro, who sported his bushiest hairdo yet for this role, says hair was very important to the revolutionaries. “The logic behind it was that when you let your beard grow, they would know how long you’d been part of the movement; it’s a badge.”

Published in :: Features

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