Benicio del Toro

Benicio is the son of Gustavo Adolfo del Toro Bermúdez and Fausta Genoveva Sánchez Rivera, who were both lawyers. He is of Spanish and Italian ancestry. He has an older brother, Gustavo, who is a pediatric oncologist. Del Toro's childhood nicknames were "Skinny Benny" and "Beno". He was raised a Roman Catholic and attended Academia del Perpetuo Socorro, a Roman Catholic school in Miramar, Puerto Rico. When he was nine years old, his mother died of hepatitis. At age 12, del Toro's father moved with his two sons to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where del Toro was enrolled at the Mercersburg Academy. He spent his adolescence and attended high school there.

After graduation, del Toro followed the advice of his father and pursued a degree in business at the University of California, San Diego. Success in an elective drama course encouraged him to drop out of college and study with noted acting teachers Stella Adler and Arthur Mendoza, in Los Angeles, as well as at the Circle in the Square Theatre School, in New York City.

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. Work in films followed, beginning with his debut in Big Top Pee-wee and in the 007 film Licence to Kill. His career gained momentum in 1995 with his breakout performance in The Usual Suspects, where he played the mumbling, wisecracking Fred Fenster. The role won him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor and established him as a character actor. His praised work swept all of the major critics awards in 2001, as well as the Golden Globe, and the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. In 2003, del Toro appeared in two films: The Hunted, co-starring Tommy Lee Jones, and the drama 21 Grams, an acting tour-de-force, co-starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. He went on to garner another Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work in the latter.

In 2001, del Toro won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Traffic, becoming the fourth living Oscar winner whose winning role was a character who speaks predominantly in a foreign language. Del Toro is also the third Puerto Rican actor to win an Oscar, after Jose Ferrer and Rita Moreno. The night he won his Oscar, it was the first time that two actors born in Puerto Rico were nominated in the same category. In his acceptance speech, del Toro thanked the people of both Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora and dedicated his award to them. In 2004, Benicio del Toro was again nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, for his performance in the film 21 Grams.