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Benicio Del Toro
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今年奥斯卡奖最佳男配角奖得主本尼切奥·德·托罗出生在一个律师家庭——他的祖父、父母、教母及叔叔都是律师。所以当他对家里人宣布他想成为一名演员的梦想时，大家都对此不以为然。然而他一直都未放弃过自己的理想，并最终取得了成功。
I'm not Jack Nicholson. I'm not Brando. But I do mumble.
— Benicio Del Toro
WHEN Benicio Del Toro first announced to his father and siblings that he intended to pursue a career in acting, they didn't take the news very well. As Del Toro told one interviewer, "My family freaked when I told them I wanted to be an actor. It was like telling them I wanted to be an astronaut.
Blessed with the exotic, sleepy-eyed good looks, Del Toro was born to lawyer parents in Puerto Rico.
Following the death of his mother, Del Toro's father moved the family to a farm in southern Pennsylvania. Although he developed a healthy interest in acting as a child, Del Toro made plans to enter the family business — his parents, his grandfather, his godmother and his uncle had all been practising attorneys at some point.
Following high school, he enrolled at the University of California in San Diego to study business. An acting class taken during his freshman year rekindled(重新点燃) his yen(渴望) to perform, and the would-be lawyer dropped out of college and spent the next couple of years studying acting, both in New York, where he attended the noted Circle in the Square Acting School, and in Los Angeles, where he trained under famed acting guru Stella Adler.
Like many of his peers, Del Toro got his start in the business doing guest-starring roles on television. In 1990, he logged his first major screen time, in the role of a sinister(阴险的) drug lord in the acclaimed NBC miniseries Drug Wars: The Kiki Camarena Story.
One year later, he snagged(获得) a small part in Sean Penn's warmly received directorial debut effort, The Indian Runner. Del Toro received his next paycheck for his performance as a thoroughly despicable(卑鄙的) rapist in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.
In spite of such career dead-ends, the game(有勇气的) young actor managed to stay afloat with convincing supporting performances in such creditable dramas as Fearless and China Moon.
His persistence was finally rewarded in 1995: the year began with a small role alongside Kevin Spacey in the Hollywood satire Swimming With Sharks. The two then reteamed for The Usual Suspects, in which Del Toro stood out amid the sparkling ensemble cast with his hilariously(可笑的) unintelligible lines.
In 1996, Del Toro parlayed his newfound celebrity into substantial roles in three films. He resurrected the gangster persona in The Funeral, and then turned in a well-received portrayal of Benny Dalmau, faithful friend to the late American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, in Basquiat. To stay afloat financially, Del Toro accepted the role of a self-obsessed baseball player who dies at the hands of a psychotic knife salesman (played by Robert De Niro) in The Fan. Del Toro managed to put the experience behind him by landing his first starring role, opposite Alicia Silverstone, in the 1997 kidnap farce Excess Baggage.
Now living in Los Angeles, Del Toro maintains a low profile between movies, and has thus far managed to avoid becoming entangled in any celebrity romances.
His screenwriting and directing debut short Submission, which starred a pre-celebrity Matthew McConaughey, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1995. The fledgling(初出茅庐的 ) filmmaker would like to direct at some point, but has said of himself, "I get quite embarrassed with my acting when I see it on the screen. I would imagine with a film that's my own, I'd be really embarrassed and have to leave the country."
Del Toro had a banner year in 2000, with his Golden Globe- and Oscar-winning supporting performance in Steven Soderbergh's drug war-focused drama Traffic, and his co-starring turn in Guy Ritchie's well-received movie Snatch.
(SD-Agencies)
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