BENICIO DEL TORO IN HIS OWN WORDS

“When I got to Hollywood, there were only two Latin American actors doing cinema, and later on Andy García joined in. I was the fourth. Then came the Spanish wave with Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem. I told myself: “you are going to work in Hollywood and perform as a latino.” I was lucky enough there was a strong movement of independent cinema when I got there and was able to do this inside the industry. I was offered the opportunity to work in some movies, but that is complicated because there are just too few scripts about the experience of latinos either in the US or in their own countries.

“(…) The project of doing something about Hernán Cortés has not been done nor has it written yet, but we are working on it. The idea is to make a series not only about him but about the Conquest of Mexico as well, and the cultural clash between Aztecs and Spaniards that reflects all the manipulation on both sides. That requires a great deal of research and it´s gonna take some time. We are living another age,

another mentality. It´s hard work, you have to prepare well. We have the concept, the idea, some characters have been already outlined, but nothing else.

“(…) The fact that some directors and producers try to typecast me does not change my way of working on a character, either based on someone who really existed or a fictitious character. With somewhat aggressiveness, I go against the stereotypes of the characters I am offered and even against others present in the script».

“(…) When the project on Che came up, there was a great number of biographies of his life, and so we told ourselves we had to go and meet the people who made him what he was. It was George W. Bush´s administration by then, and traveling to Cuba was extremely complicated. So, we had to request a lot of authorizations. We met many people who had a relationship with Che: colleagues, friends, relatives…and what motivated me the most was to make a movie from the viewpoint of Cubans”.