Benicio Del Toro is back in the award conversations after 24 years of winning the Oscar.
Puerto Rican actor Benicio Del Toro returns to the awards after 24 years since winning the Oscar for Traffic. The actor returned with a performance reminding us why he’s one of the most compelling actors of his generation.
In Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” Del Toro plays Sensei, a character whose quiet dignity and unwavering optimism provide the film’s emotional anchor amid chaos and uncertainty.
When Anderson called, the answer was simple. “It’s PTA,” Del Toro says matter-of-factly. “He calls any actor on the planet, and they’re going to say, ‘Yeah, what do you got? Whatever, I’ll do it.’” The prospect of working alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn only sweetened the deal.
However, what truly informed Del Toro’s performance was the research. The production visited facilities in El Paso where migrant families wait in limbo, uncertain of their futures. “It was pretty moving, seeing these people, what appears to be good people, looking for a better future, being stuck in a situation that is pretty unstable and not knowing what their future would be,” Del Toro recalls. “That research that we did just made it real for everybody for the set decorator, for the art department, for the director and for me”.
Anderson gave Del Toro a piece of direction that became a mantra for the character and a philosophy for life: “Get back on defence.” The phrase, which Del Toro remembers from working with the auteur on “Inherent Vice,” eventually made its way into the script. “Don’t get bogged down on things,” Del Toro explains. “Just keep looking, being. Think about the next play. He’s a ‘next play’ type of director, always looking ahead. I think that it’s healthy for actors to be like that. You try your best, but you can be stuck on something you did. You need to learn to let it go real quick, because tomorrow is another day”.
As one of only a handful of Latino actors to win an Academy Award and with Latinas having won just three times in history, Del Toro has a unique perspective on representation in Hollywood. While he acknowledges there’s more opportunity now than when he started, he’s frank about what’s still missing.
“I still haven’t seen a Latino movement,” he admits. “There was an African American movement with Spike Lee, Denzel Washington and Don Cheadle. There are a lot of filmmakers, and it’s amazing. The Italian American story has been told. Latino is somewhat different.”
He continued, “I’m always hoping that there’s more opportunity and there’s more stories. I don’t think we’re there when it comes to stories of the Hispanic story in the United States, and that includes Puerto Rico, every different Latino that lives, whether it’s in Florida, Chicago, California, New York, Texas, or New Mexico. There are a lot of Latinos in this country”.
Del Toro saw a potential solution, one that involves stepping behind the camera himself. “I like to get behind the camera and tell a story about that,” he says. “That’s something I would like to do. I’m not saying that I’m that voice. That voice is right now probably in high school, or they’re in college right now, and are about to break out. It’s going to happen”. Having directed a segment in “Seven Days in Havana,” Del Toro feels ready himself.
“I’ve had an incredible education on cinema. If you take everyone that I’ve worked with and all the projects that I’ve worked with, inevitably you start feeling like, I want to maybe get behind and tell a story that comes from me being American, being Latino, and the experience of being a Latino in this time and world that we’re in”.
In a moment when the world feels increasingly fractured, Del Toro finds hope in his “One Battle After Another” character.
“Sensei has this thing that I feel is always positive,” he shares. “It’s staying in that positive and keep doing your thing. Good and truth will hopefully come up and show its face and win.”
He draws parallels to 1968, another tumultuous time. “Kids were being drafted to go to war. Leaders were being shut down permanently. You just have to keep going. I have faith in the youth, even though my daughter is stuck on a phone all the time. There’s good, and we have to trust in the young people”.