Esquire — June 2018 127
in the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel. He was
on a high then, accepting congratulations for
his recent Oscar win, for his performance as
a Mexican cop in a tight spot in Traic, Steven
Soderbergh’s drugs war drama. (A table of
heavyset, sharp suited Italian-American men
actually applauded as he passed; one stood to
shake hands with Del Toro — “great job, great
job”. It was Steven Van Zandt, E Street Band
guitarist and star of he Sopranos.)
That was a long time ago and much has
happened since. The world has changed. But
some things stay the same. I’m still interview-
ing film stars. He’s still playing soulful, con-
flicted men caught up in the drugs wars on
the US-Mexican border. In the forthcoming
Sicario 2: Soldado, the sequel to the searing 2015
thriller Sicario, he plays a killer determined to
avenge the murders of his wife and daughter
on the orders of a cartel boss.
That might sound like a lack of progress,
on both our parts, but while I make no claims
for my own output in the intervening years,
Del Toro’s body of work — particularly where
it relates to that topic: drugs, the drug wars,
their efect on individuals and on sociey — has
amassed a weight and a complexiy and power.
Still, until our recent catch-up, Del Toro had
remained frozen, in my mind, as the 34-year-
old I met back in 2001: the hard-charging
Hollywood actor with the Robert Mitchum eyes,
and the late-night twinkle, and the oddly appeal-
ing private semaphore — physical jerks and tics
and gesticulations, as if signalling to an imagi-
nary friend, or a plane no one else could see.
It’s a silly word, really, but Del Toro
impressed me then, as he continues to impress
audiences today, as a man who might best be
described as “cool”, a cool dude: the thinking
man’s Hollywood badass.
here’s a moment during Somewhere, Sofia
Coppola’s movie business satire, from 2010,
that I think adroitly captures the public image
of Benicio Del Toro, or at least my enduring
fanboy notion of him. he action takes place
at the Chateau Marmont, the haute bohemian
hotel on Sunset Boulevard, where Somewhere’s
central character, an ageing bad boy movie‘I’m not saying I’m glad there’s people out there dying
from the drugs and the violence, just so I can flap my wings,
but I’ve been luc to be around at the right moment’