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The Transformation
Benicio del Toro’s choice of roles up
to this point have never been the hero in the white hat. Instead,
he has built a storied career on portraying deliciously complicated
protagonists with issues. So to watch his evolution into the lead
role in The Wolfman—fur, fangs and all—feels somehow,
well, natural.
By Anna Marie de la Fuente
Benicio del Toro’s choice of roles up to this
point have never been the hero in the white hat. Instead, he has
built a storied career on portraying deliciously complicated protagonists
with issues. So to watch his evolution into the lead role in The
Wolfman—fur, fangs and all—feels somehow, well, natural.
Even del Toro knows it is a role that fits. “I’ve always
been a fan of black and white horror classics,” says the Puerto
Rican actor and Academy Award winner. He stands over 6 feet tall
and has the thick dark eyebrows and brooding looks that make him
ideal to play the mythical shape-shifting wolf. Even his friend,
actor Sean Penn sees him in a similar manner. “He’s
like an acting animal, this guy who comes out of the forest to make
movies better,” he has said.
But, meeting him one weekend in Los Angeles, del Toro could not
look less like that animal. Decked out in an expensive black suit
and a white shirt, he sat in a small but elegant room in the Four
Seasons Hotel. He was the picture of composure. He might be an animal
on the set, but he’s often reticent for the press.
He was most eager to discuss his latest beastly character. It was
del Toro and his manager, Rick Yorn, who convinced Universal Studios
to remake the 1941 classic, The Wolf Man, as a sort of an homage
to the classic horror genre, remaining true to the original style
and story. The film, to be released February 12, marks a milestone
in del Toro’s career. With a budget allegedly north of $100
million, it is the most expensive film in which he plays the lead.
Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot, who returns from America to the
family estate in England after hearing from his brother’s
fiancee (who is played by Emily Blunt) that his brother has vanished.
He admits that the iconic performance of Lon Chaney, Jr., who played
the werewolf in the original film, inspired his own interpretation
of the role.
In the movie, del Toro’s character reunites with his estranged
father, played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, only to discover horrific
forces at play. To explain del Toro’s Latino looks—he
certainly does not resemble Hopkins—Talbot’s mother
in the movie is Latina. When asked how plausible it would be for
Latinas to have married into English aristocracy during Victorian
times, del Toro points out, “There were mixed marriages between
the Argentinians and the English during those times.”
In his past roles, del Toro, 43, did not need an excess of makeup
to morph into his characters. And that quality has become his calling
card. Other than the wildly different characters that he has personified
onscreen, it is difficult to know del Toro. Many details are known
about his past. He was born in Puerto Rico to a mother and father
who were both lawyers, he was sent to school in the U.S. when he
was 13, and was in college when he discovered acting. But not much
is known about his personality or what makes him tick.
And getting that information can prove tricky. When journalists
have veered to close to del Toro’s personal life, he has done
anything to shy away from the questions, including storming out
of an interview.
As private as he is about himself, he certainly leaves a big impression
on friends and cohorts who are willing to shed light on his nature.
“Is he a method actor?” muses director/writer Christopher
McQuarrie, who won a best original screenplay Oscar for The Usual
Suspects and directed del Toro in The Way of the Gun. “The
definition is very broad, so I don’t know. I can say he is
a story-teller.”
Screenwriter David Hayter (The X-Men, Watchmen) who has written
and is set to direct a werewolf-themed film later this year, recalls
how he first met del Toro on the set of The Usual Suspects when
he had gone to support his friend, the film’s director Bryan
Singer.
“Benicio carried an air of mystery about him, which is part
of what makes him such a powerful actor,” he says. “That,
and his mind, which is constantly addressing the issues of the story,
and coming up with creative, original ways to solve those problems.”
Hayter relates how del Toro came up with up with the strange gibberish
for his character of Fred Fenster in The Usual Suspects. “He
figured out that if it didn’t matter what he was saying then
the audience didn’t need to understand him.
“On his first day on set, Benicio started into his ‘Fenster-speak,’
and Bryan walked up to him after the shot, and said, ‘Um,
so... Is that how you’re going to say all your lines?’
Benicio said yes. Bryan thought about it for a beat, and then said,
‘Okay.’ A brilliant choice, for a director who was smart
enough to recognize and accept it,” Hayter concludes.
For Sin City, Robert Rodriguez remembers his co-director Frank Miller
saying, “I kind of let you direct Benicio, I could tell you
guys had the whole Latin thing going on.”
“It was true, we connected immediately on that level and had
an enormous amount of fun on that film,” Rodriguez says. “But
Benicio’s also extremely creative, full of ideas, and makes
a character live and breathe—which makes the whole experience
run smoothly.”
McQuarrie credits del Toro for helping him figure out the ending
of his directorial debut, The Way of the Gun. “I consider
it to be ‘our’ film, not mine,” McQuarrie says.
“Much of the action in the film evolved from conversations
with Benicio. We were midway through the movie, and I had still
not worked out all the action for the film’s climactic shoot-out
centering around the delivery of the ransom money,” he says
about the film. “Benicio came to me and asked: “How
much does the money weigh?’ I was very busy and said: ‘Who
cares?’ Benicio said: ‘I care. I have to carry it.’
“So I had the prop guy work out how much a bag holding $15
million dollars in 10s, 20s and 50s (as described in the script)
would weigh,” he relates. “As it turns out, it would
fill 35 printer paper boxes and weigh 2,300 pounds. By making it
all 100s, we brought the weight down to 375 pounds, divided evenly
into three very large duffle bags.
“And suddenly I saw the entire ending of the movie. I had
a great complication: two men, each with one gun and three bags,
each weighing as much as a small adult,” he recalls. “Suddenly
a bullet in the arm cost $5 million. The sheer weight and mass of
the money became what the gunfight was all about. It had never occurred
to me until Benicio asked.”
Not that working with del Toro is always easy. “His attention
to detail can be exasperating to directors,” says actor/writer
Brandon Boyce (Milk) who also met del Toro while visiting the set
of The Usual Suspects. “He’s more concerned about the
authenticity of his performance than whether the audience will get
it.”
But, this uncompromising stance is most likely what landed him his
Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic
where he insisted that his Mexican cop character be righteous and
less ambiguous, giving the film a vital moral core.
Even in his less successful films, del Toro’s performance
shines through. While noting that there have been few other screen
portrayals of Che Guevara, the Argentine-born Marxist guerrilla
leader charged with helping craft the Cuban Revolution, Jon Lee
Anderson, author of the biography Che Guevara, A Revolutionary Life,
observes that del Toro “put a lot of integrity into his performance”
in Soderbergh’s otherwise flawed two-part film.
“I thought he lived and breathed Che during the making of
the film,” Anderson says. “This degree of extended identification
and merging, almost, by an actor with his role, is unusual, and
with del Toro and Che it was nothing if not exceptional.”
Del Toro acknowledges the role of Che was a challenge. Not only
in its portrayal of a controversial figure, but also because of
a surprising linguistic challenge. “I found out that acting
in Spanish was not as easy as I expected it to be,” del Toro
observes.
Del Toro was a co-producer in Che, as he was in The Wolfman. He
was also an executive producer in Puerto Rican dramedy Maldeamores
(Lovesickness). But now he’s ready to make the leap into directing.
“I’ve been in this business for more than 20 years,”
he says. “It’s time I took the chance.”
While he has no specific project in the near future, he is attached
to two high-profile projects currently in a state of flux: The Three
Stooges and Martin Scorcese’s Silence. In the Stooges film,
he’s rumored to play Moe, the bowl-haircut-sporting alpha
dog. It’s a far cry from anything del Toro has played before,
and it’s hard to imagine such an iconoclast playing slapstick
comedy. But then again, if his repertoire has revealed anything,
it’s to expect the unexpected.
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