Benicio del Toro, born Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sanchez on 19th February 1967 in San German, Puerto Rico, USA, is an actor and film producer. He got BAFTA Award, Academy Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and Golden Globe award for his role as a police officer, shrewd and upright, in the movie Traffic in 2000. He won another Academy Award nomination and Screen Actors Guild awards for his role in the film 21 Grams in 2003. He received many other awards during his career.

Personal Life

Del Toro was born to Fausta Genoveva Sanchez Rivera and Gustavo Adolfo del Toro Bermudez, both lawyers. His only brother, elder to him, Gustavo, works as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice-President in Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York. His paternal great-grandfather was a Catalan whereas the maternal great-grandmother, a Basque. He is also related to Carlos Arroyo, a Puerto Rican basketball player.

He spent his early life at Santurce in San Juan. He is a Roman Catholic by birth, and joined Academia del Perpetuo Socorro (The Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Help). This was a Roman Catholic school based in the city of Miramar in Puerto Rico. At the age of 9, he lost his mother to hepatitis. Then, he moved to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania with his brother and father at the age of 15, where he joined Mercersburg Academy. He did his graduation and got a business degree from the University of California in the city of San Diego.

His early success in dramas attracted him towards acting. He trained in acting from acting teachers like Arthur Mendoza and Stella Adler. He also learnt acting at New York City’d Circle in the Square Theatre School. He married Kimberly Stewart, and there is no record, he divorced her.

Career

During the latter part of 1980s, Del Toro started his acting career by appearing in small roles on television, and played drug dealers and thugs in such television programmes as Miami Vice, and Drug Wars: The Camarena Story. He also appeared in a music video La Isla Bonita of Madonna in 1987. Then he joined film by debuting in Big Top Pee-Wee in 1988.

He appeared in another film namely License to Kill in which he was the youngest star at 21 to have played Bond henchman. His other movies that followed afterwards include The Indian Runner (1991), China Moon (1994), Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), Money for Nothing (1993), Fearless (1993), and Swimming with Sharks (1994).

His film career got a boost in 1995 when he performed outstandingly in The Usual Suspects. He acted in Basquiat in 1996, Excess Baggage in 1997, and For Fear of Loathing in Las Vegas in 1998. He acted in two films namely The Hunted, and 21 Grams for which he got another nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 2003. He acted in the More Behind the Star series in 2016, and in 2017, and played the role of a villain in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. As per his biography, his net worth is $45 million.