128 Esquire — June 2018
actor in the grip of an existential crisis, lives
a life of soulless self-indulgence. He’s played by
ageing bad boy movie actor Stephen Dorf.
In the scene in question, Dorff’s charac-
ter enters a lift at the hotel and encounters
an actor more famous and successful than
he. It’s Benicio Del Toro. He’s wearing a blue
blazer and a stained baseball cap with the
word “California” emblazoned on it. (This is
a guess, but I don’t imagine he had to spend
long in wardrobe to achieve this look.) Warily,
they acknowledge each other. Dorf’s character
looks somehow expectant. Del Toro looks like
he is enjoying a private joke. Dorf’s character,
Johnny, is first to speak.
Johnny: “Hey, man.”
Benicio: “Hey.”
he lit starts to go up.
Benicio: “What room you in?”
Johnny: “59?”
Benicio: “I met Bono in 59.”
Johnny (laughing): “Oh, yeah? hat’s cool.”
Pause. “See you, man.”
Benicio (of screen): “Stay loose.”
See what I mean? Wry, inscrutable, sleepily
handsome, creatively dishevelled, louche with-
out being creepy. Cool.
It’s not him, of course. In the credits to
Somewhere, next to his name, it doesn’t say
“Himself”. It says “Celebriy”. Coppola and Del
Sixties and Seventies, the easy riders and the
raging bulls: De Niro, Pacino, Nicholson,
Hoffman et al. In most cases, these men had
been trained for the theatre, had studied act-
ing as a craft, under the same teachers — in
the case of Del Toro, Stella Adler — who had
taught Marlon Brando and James Dean in what
became known as method acting: intensely
studied performance aiming for complete nat-
uralism. Not just hiting your mark and saying
your lines and being buf.
Del Toro is old school in other ways. He
listens to classic rock, on vinyl. “I find it very
relaxing.” At our first meeting for this piece,
he turns up wearing a Rolling Stones tour
T-shirt under his blazer. hat band comes up
more than once, in conversation. As do The
Clash and The Beatles. The most animated
he becomes during the Esquire photo shoot
is in the course of a discussion, between pic-
tures, of Paul McCartney’s underrated solo
output: “McCartney II, man. Oooh!” He hasToro are playing with our perceptions of what
the life of Del Toro, or someone like Del Toro,
a famous actor on the Hollywood scene, might
be like. And yet...
Is he really as cool as all that, I ask Josh
Brolin, his Sicario co-star, who’s known him,
on and off, since they were 19? Or is he just
another doofus, like the rest of us?
“We’re all doofuses, man!” says Brolin. “No
one’s really cool. But if there’s anyone who
could be perceived as cool it’s Benicio, for sure.”
Del Toro is old school. He's a throwback
to a time, not so long ago, when the distinc-
tion between character actor and leading man
briefly collapsed, and unconventional, even
awkward men, outsiders who once might have
been pushed to the margins, could take cen-
tre stage without conforming to rigid ideals of
square-jawed masculine heroism. Even if they
happened to be square-jawed.
He is enthralled by the work of the singu-
lar movie stars of the New Hollywood of the‘I’m proud of it, but that movie tanked’: Del Toro as Dr Gonzo alongside Johnny Depp
in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), below. ‘Suddenly it was like, “Hey, maybe
this guy can act!”’: as Fred Fenster in he Usual Suspects (1995), opposite