Father, politician, philanthropist... and drug baron
Cinema
“THE drug-war movie is almost like a genre,” says Benicio Del Toro. “I’ve been part of that. I am part of that.” True, such films span the Puerto Rican-born actor’s entire career. One of his earliest works, 1990 TV mini-series Drug Wars: The Camarena Story, dealt with the murder of undercover DEA agent Enrique ‘Kiki’ Camarena. He won an Oscar for Traffic, playing a cartel-fighting Mexican police officer. More recently, he was Mexican cartel enforcer Miguel ‘Lado’ Arroyo in Oliver Stone’s Savages. If ever an author puts pen to paper on the subject, he says “they’ll have to put my picture in the book!”
A character player in the mould of Lon Chaney or Edward G. Robinson, Del Toro has done a great deal more – whether it was his word-slurring crook in The Usual Suspects, his freedom fighter in Che (which won him Best Actor in Cannes) or his bizarrely-coiffed The Collector in Guardians of the Galaxy. But it’s these narcotics-related roles that live longest in the memory. “You could say I’ve been typecast to play was smuggling 15 tonnes of cocaine per day into the United States.
The film fictionalises a relationship between Escobar and a Canadian surfer named Nick (The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson), who falls for Escobar’s niece, Maria (Claudia Traisac). But Del Toro says the character traits are all genuine. “We stuck to the truth about Escobar,” he says. “He was a family man. He did go to jail with records under his arm. He whacked a lot of people. Maybe not personally but he ordered it. Even journalists. If you wrote something bad about him, you were gone.”
If Escobar: Paradise Lost doesn’t entirely work as a feature, due to fictionalised padding, it’s through no fault of Del Toro’s, whose observations are acute. But it’s the forthcoming Sicario that’s liable to gain him awards-season attention and a possible third Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination (after his win for Traffic and his nod for 21 Grams).
Co-starring with Emily Blunt, who plays an FBI agent, Del Toro doesn’t seem to mind that it’s another tale about narcotics. “I like the story and Denis is saying something that is new through my character. Or new for me, that I haven’t played, which is this revenge. In order to play that, you need to have to someone directing you that is willing to take chances.”
Taking chances has always been Del Toro’s game-plan. He may have fleshed out his career with studio films – notably taking the lead in 2010’s Universal monster movie The Wolfman – but his mainstay has been indie cinema. “I feel like it’s my duty in a way to be able to do smaller films,” he says. “Some are forgetting where they come from. You can’t forget where you come from! I’ve started doing independent movies, and I feel like it’s my duty to not forget where I come from.”
The son of two lawyers, Del Toro’s own roots, raised in Miramar, inspired his acting. While his mother died when he was nine, his earliest memories are watching and imitating his father. “The way he sat, the way he walked, the way he would grab his briefcase… I would grab a briefcase and look at myself in the mirror. I must’ve been four. When my dad would get angry, I would imitate him. I still see my dad (in me). When I see me in movies, I just see my Dad. Sometimes, I see Boris Karloff!”
Now Del Toro is a father himself – to Delilah, who turns four next week and sprang from a brief liaison with Kimberly Stewart, the actress-model daughter to Rod Stewart. It’s changed him, he says. He recently voiced a role in the upcoming animation The Little Prince. “I’m more interested in doing stuff that maybe my daughter would enjoy,” he concedes. “But it’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to play bad guy anymore now I’m a father.’” And what does she like to watch? “She’s really right now into (The Beatles’ animated film) Yellow Submarine,” he grins. “I love watching that movie!”