Benicio Del Toro

Season 8, Episode 815

Original Airdate: June 30, 2002

Benicio Del Toro was born February 19, 1967 in Puerto Rico, where he spent his early childhood. When he was nine, his mother, an attorney, died after a battle with hepatitis and he moved with his family to Pennsylvania.

After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of California at San Diego, with plans to become a lawyer. Del Toro caught the acting bug after taking a drama class and soon changed his major from business to drama, causing a temporary falling out with his father, who was also an attorney.

After college, Del Toro moved to New York, studying both at the Circle in the Square Professional Theater School and the respected Stella Adler Conservatory. Later he described Adler, with her merciless coaching, as the “Bobby Knight” of acting teachers. His hard work began to pay off with small television roles and his first film role, the circus performer Duke the Dog-Faced Boy in Paul Rubens' Big Top Pee-wee (1988).

Over the next several years, Del Toro turned in solid performances in China Moon (1991) and Christoper Columbus: The Discovery (1992). Del Toro begin to win positive reviews in 1993 for his work in Fearless, co-starring Rosie Perez, and the independent film Swimming with Sharks (1994).

His breakthrough role came with his portrayal of hoodlum Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects (1995), for which he won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male. In 1996, Del Toro won a second Independent Spirit Award for his role in Basquiat, starring Jeffrey Wright. Unfortunately, Del Toro's first foray as a Hollywood leading man was in the forgettable Excess Baggage (1997) and his next two roles in 1998's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Way of the Gun (2000) were also box-office flops.

But, Del Toro's luck changed dramatically with the release of Traffic (2000), directed by Steven Soderbergh. Del Toro won both critical praise and plenty of attention from film fans for his portrayal of an honest Mexican cop embroiled in the brutal machinations of the Mexican-American drug trade. He also scored a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Best Actor award.

Other recent roles include tough guy Frankie Four Fingers in Snatch (2000) and a Native American man wrongly convicted of rape in The Pledge (2001).