Benicio Del Toro Learns to Pace Himself
In movies like “The Usual Suspects,” “Traffic,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” and a pair of “Avengers” films, Benicio Del Toro has been a strikingly economical player, averaging an unusually high ratio of memorable moments to minutes on screen.
It wasn’t until he was filming “Escape at Dannemora,” an eight-part television mini-series for Showtime, that he understood the need to pace himself. The shoot stretched nearly seven months.
“It was a marathon,” he recalled. “I had to learn to pull back and to breathe, or else I was going to explode.”
The Showtime mini-series and “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” an unlikely sequel to his bracing 2015 thriller now in global release, inaugurate a new era of longevity for Mr. Del Toro’s onscreen personas, suggesting that his extensive career may yet find a new gear.
Mr. Del Toro, who was born in Puerto Rico, is now one of only a few Latinos to star in a film franchise released by Hollywood, where His- panic actors still must often settle for supporting parts.
At 51, he has an air of quiet sensitivity and a slightly adenoidal voice. Since his breakout performance in “The Usual Suspects” in 1995 as a minor character named Fenster, Mr. Del Toro has worked his way through gritty ensemble fare, including “Snatch,” “21 Grams” and “Sin City.”
A best- supporting Oscar for “Traffic” (2000) did not turn him into a leading name overnight, but he rambled toward a quiet kind of leading- man status opposite Halle Berry in “Things We Lost in the Fire” (2007), and in the two-part Che Guevara biopic “Che” (2008), which he also produced.
His character in the “Sicario” films is both the hit man of the film’s Spanish title and a near mythical figure who manages to be more feared than seen.
“He represents the rage against the violence of the drug war — the evil of it,” Mr. Del Toro said of the character. “He’s a victim of the drug cartels, and so he’s become completely callous, like an ice cube.”
The original f i l m, which also starred Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin, was a haunting meditation on moral ambiguity and unremitting violence across the Texas-Mexico border. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, it had the mood and pacing of art- house fare and the box office debut to match.
But the film enjoyed a healthier performance internationally, turning into a modest hit, with a worldwide gross to date of $85 million on a production budget of $ 30 million. The film’s writer, Taylor Sheridan, pitched the producers on a trilogy that would include “Soldado” and a third “Sicario” film.
Mr. Del Toro, as he has throughout his career, endowed his character in “Day of the Soldado” with vivid and imaginative details. He also contributed to shaping other characters in the story. At his suggestion, one was rewritten as a deaf man who communicates in sign language.
Mr. Del Toro also reimagined an early execution scene, deciding on a rapid-fire shooting style in which one index finger, turned palm-side down, is repeatedly rammed against the trigger. The result played so well on camera that it was used in the movie’s trailer and became a meme.
Mr. Del Toro, who lives in Los Angeles and has a 6-year- old daughter with the socialite Kimberly Stewart, infuses his character work with shards of personal history. DJ, the mercenary hacker he played in “The Last Jedi,” had a stutter that Mr. Del Toro said was based on that of his father.
His father, who still lives in Puerto Rico, was an indirect source for the execution scene in “Day of the Soldado,” too. Mr. Del Toro got the idea for the rapid-fire method years ago, after seeing someone use it at a shooting range.
“I grew up with guns,” he said, recalling shooting bottle targets with the elder Mr. Del Toro. “My father was in the military and my grandfather was a cop — I had a respect for guns, but also an understanding of how dangerous they can be.”
Mr. Del Toro is sanguine about his professional reputation — “Humphrey Bogart, Al Pacino and Denzel Washington also played a lot of bad guys,” he said — but cleareyed about the role his ethnicity has played in defining his career.
“If you’re a Latino actor and you get a job in movies, it’s going to be as some kind of gangster,” he said.
Mr. Del Toro’s desire to excel as an actor has sometimes had to overcome an impulse to challenge negative stereotypes.
“If I have to pick between breaking the stereotype and going for the good part, I’m always going to go for the good part,” he said. “I just think the good part is always going to be more satisfying. And I have my own life — I can make sure to break the stereotype there.”