Esquire — June 2018 131
was a lawyer, came from a less rarefied back-
ground — “rural people,” his son says, in San
Germán, on the other side of the island.
Del Toro’s childhood was spent in Miramar,
a smart district on the outskirts of San Juan.
He attended the Academy of Our Lady of
Perpetual Help, a prestigious Catholic school
for the sons and daughters of the island’s pro-
fessional classes. When he was nine years old,
his mother died. She had been ill for some time
with hepatitis.
“My childhood was kind of like a contradic-
tion,” he says. “It was a sad childhood because
we knew that our mom was dying.” He pauses.
“Look, we’re all dying. But we knew that our
mom was going to die very soon. We knew that
she was very sick. And at the same time there
was a sense of happiness around the house. My
mom had a great sense of humour. here was
a sense of looking at what was coming straight
in the face and at the same time just enjoying
life. Because we’re all going to die. And you can
get boged down in that. You can just freeze:
‘Oh fuck, I’m gonna die.’ And not do anything,
just wait for death. She didn’t freeze at all, no.
My mom was a tough cookie.”
It’s more than 40 years since she died. I won-
der how much he remembers of her, if he still
thinks of her. He says he once met the great
Japanese film-maker, Kaneto Shindô, shortly
before Shindô’s death at the age of 99. “When he
was 75 he did a movie that was a homage to his
mom. I asked him: ‘Did that change anything?’
He goes, ‘Not a bit.’ He goes, ‘I’m 99 years old,
I think about my mom every day.’” It’s the same
with Del Toro. “It’s crazy. It’s amazing. It’s really
a cause for celebration.”
Citizens of Puerto Rico are American, they
can come and go freely from the mainland. But
Puerto Rico is not the same as middle America.
“When you go there,” he says, “it doesn’t feel
like you’re in a different country, but it does
feel like you’re in a diferent culture, completely.
The language, the religion, the attitudes, the
food, the music, the art... it remains very strong.
Puerto Rico is old. It has a long past, and a con-
nection to Europe through Spain, and a big
African influence, through the history of slav-
ery. Maybe a kid growing up there is exposed
to things that a kid who grew up in LA isn’t.”
Del Toro’s father was a disciplinarian. The
son of a policeman, he’d had a difficult child-
hood himself. He, too, lost his own mother
when he was young. The men of the family
were steely. Benicio’s great uncle, brother of his
father’s father, was also a cop, and a bodyguard:
he was in shootouts, gun batles in the street.
He was the kind of man Benicio plays now on
screen. His father told him he was reminded of
this uncle by Benicio’s character, Alejandro, in
Sicario. (In Mexico, “sicario” means “hitman.”)
From Benicio’s father he gets his distinctiveHe was 44 when Delilah was born. He’s
pleased he didn’t become a father earlier. “Oh,
man. I would’ve been a terrible dad at 26. At
26! I went out every night to pubs and dis-
cos and parties. Every night. That started to
change in my late twenties, when I started get-
ting really busy, but still I went out every day.
I don’t understand how people get married
really young. I mean, I do understand it but you
can see that it’s diicult.”
Mostly unremarkable in his dress — denim
jacket, T-shirt, black trousers, Adidas trainers
(old school variey) — on his finger, on the days
of our meetings, he wears a large silver ring in
the shape of a lion’s head. He ofers it for inspec-
tion. I weigh it in my palm and slip it on. Way
too big for this pale ypist’s slender finger. Who
gave it to him?
“Someone special.”
Is he going to tell me who?
“Let’s keep some secrets.”
What does it signiy? He pauses, considering
whether to share this titbit, then shrugs: what
the hell?
“’Cause I don’t wanna yap like a hyena,” he
says, adopting a begging pose, paws raised.
hen his voice drops a key. “I wanna sit there
and let it come to me, like a lion.”
Another pause. And then a great wheezing
laugh, and he half-collapses sideways, a lop-
sided grin on his face, shoulders shaking. Not a
bull or a lion, more like Mutley the cartoon dog.
Bull, lion, dog... wait, we’re not finished.
Josh Brolin quotes their Sicario co-star,
Emily Blunt, who also starred opposite Del
Toro in The Wolfman, in 2010. (No prizes for
guessing which one of them played the hairy
guy with the fangs.) “Emily says he’s just like
a big bear,” Brolin says. “He has that look.
He’s a man’s man and all that. But he’s truly
one of the sweetest guys I know. Inside, he’s
absolute jelly.”“i have no control over where I was born
or what the fuck is this world that we live in,”
Del Toro tells me, when I ask to what extent
his career has been dictated by his ethniciy, his
Puerto Rican-ness. “I can only say that my life
has influenced the fuck out of every character
that I play. And by that I mean my experiences,
my upbringing, the things I went through as
a human being... hat’s the first thing I go to
with every role I play. It starts with mom and
dad, then family, then school, religion, super-
stition, culture. Big time Puerto Rican! Latin
American, Hispanic, American as well. All
those things marked the hell out of my life.”
Del Toro’s parents were lawyers. His
mother, Fausta, came from a prominent fam-
ily in the Puerto Rican capital, San Juan. His
father, Gustavo, who was in the army before he