Benicio del Toro was born and grew up in Santurce, Puerto Rico, a district of San Juan. He is the son of Gustavo Adolfo del Toro Bermúdez and Fausta Sánchez Rivera, who were both lawyers. He has an older brother, Gustavo, who is a pediatric oncologist. Del Toro's childhood nicknames were "Skinny Benny" and "Beno". He was raised Catholic and attended Academia del Perpetuo Socorro (The Academy Read more...

Del Toro began to surface in small television parts during the late 1980s, playing mostly thugs and drug dealers on programs like Miami Vice and the NBC miniseries, Drug Wars: The Camarena Story. He had a cameo in Madonna's 1987 music video clip "La Isla Bonita" as a background character. Work in films followed, beginning with his debut in Big Top Pee-wee and in the 007 film Licence to Kill, in Read more...

In 2001, del Toro became the fourth Oscar winner whose winning role was a character who speaks predominantly in a foreign language (most of del Toro's dialogue in Traffic is in Spanish). Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro, and Roberto Benigni are the other three (Marion Cotillard became the fifth winner of an Academy Award for a character who speaks in a foreign language). Del Toro is also the third Puerto Read more...