Benicio del Toro (Puerto Rico, 56 years old) receives this weekend in Madrid the Platinum award of honor at the Ibero-American film gala, which was previously received by Antonio Banderas, Ricardo Darín, Carmen Maura... "I feel very happy to form part of that group," he says.
30 years have passed since the premiere of
Huevos de oro
, the first film he shot with a Spanish director, Bigas Luna, and he remembers that to play that role that allowed him to meet one of his "favorite actors", Javier Bardem, he escaped from another shoot in Pennsylvania.
"The
Golden Eggs
It was in Miami and the other thing in the middle of winter, so I had to put on a Mexican hat so that the sun wouldn't hit me”. During the award presentation ceremony, the public melted with the anecdote before this long man (1.88 meters) with the most expressive dark circles in the cinema.
There is also laughter when he explains that he would like his country to do in films "the incredible thing that has been achieved with reggaeton" or when, to explain that he wants to do other things - "produce, direct, perhaps"... -, he compares with SpongeBob ― "since I'm a father, everything has changed a lot" ―.
In conversation with EL PAÍS, he says that he would like to take his daughter to see the Alhambra in Granada: “Now she is 11 years old and it is the perfect time, but on Monday I have to be in New York and this time there is no time for tourism.
Next visit."
The actor, winner of an Oscar for
Traffic
(2000), has Basque roots: “A surname on his father's side is Irisarri;
another on my mother's side, from my grandmother, is Bengoa, I grew up in a place called Santurce and I am a fan of the Eskorbuto group”.
He has pending the premiere on Netflix of his latest work,
the thriller
Reptile
, with Alicia Silverstone.
Question
.
In
The Fabelmans
, Steven Spielberg describes the fascination of his first time in the cinema, almost as if he felt enlightened when he entered that dark room.
Remember that first time?
Answer.
The first film I remember is a James Bond film,
Live and Let Die
[1973].
My old man and my grandfather liked cowboys, westerns, but that feeling of being in the cinema, surrounded by people, with the movie about to start and people going "shhh", that...
Q.
That is not given by Netflix.
R.
No. And it has stayed with me forever.
Another film that made a big impression on me when I saw it at the cinema was
Papillon
[1977], with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.
I was impressed.
Q.
And someone as famous as you, can you still do that ritual of going to the movies, buying some popcorn and immersing yourself in a story without anyone bothering you?
Does fame take away freedom?
R.
Fame takes that away a bit, privacy.
Well, it's not exactly that I take it from you, it's that you have to fight for it.
It starts to be something you have to prepare, cook, organize.
And that takes time.
But I still go to the movies.
Recently, to see
Air.
I also watch movies at home and show movies to my daughter.
Q.
What is the last one that you have put?
A.
(Laughs).
My daughter and a friend of hers came from seeing
Scream 2
, a horror movie that scares me.
I asked them if they wanted to see a really good movie and I put
Sunset Boulevard
[1950].
Q.
And did you like it?
R.
At first it was: "Ugh, black and white", but yes, they liked it.
Q.
Until you won the Oscar, your family still insisted on straightening it out, that is, on taking it to Law, which was what your parents and godmother had studied.
A.
Yes.
I am sad that they are no longer with us and I miss them.
If I could get them to come back with that, I'd be studying law right now.
Q.
Where is the Oscar?
A.
At home.
Q.
In what part of the house?
Do you forget that you have an Oscar?
R.
Yes, one forgets.
Q.
In Spain there is talk of the Goya curse: stop working after winning the prize.
Can an actor get used to success, relax at some point?
R.
No. If you got used to it, it means that you believed it.
Success is like a cloud, the smoke that comes out of the car.
It's like the smell of the flower, I'm going to become a poet.
It can bring you opportunities, but it can't do your job.
Benicio del Toro, this Friday, in Madrid.
samuel sanchez
Q.
Are you still afraid that the phone will not ring?
R.
Yes. Rejection is part of the actor's training.
It's something that stays with you, it's always there.
You feel that perhaps you are no longer going to work.
But you can't get desperate and do anything or something that doesn't really interest you, that doesn't move you, because you're afraid of not working.
There are ways to keep busy without having to film.
Q.
Do you remember what your first acting salary was and what you did with it?
R.
Yes, the first thing I did was buy a suitcase (laughs).
Q.
What a metaphor, right?
R.
Yes. The salary was a little more than that, but that was the investment I made: traveling.
It was the first time I bought a suitcase in my life because I always had the one that was passed from cousin to uncle, to grandfather... That was in 1988 or thereabouts.
And it still had no wheels.
Q.
There is a Spanish comedian, Raúl Cimas, who makes a joke about that: we sent a man to the Moon and it took us many more years to put wheels on the suitcases.
R.
_
(laughs).
Yes it's true.
The suitcases started to have wheels like in the nineties!
Q.
When you were over 70, the director Kaneto Shindo, whom you admire, dedicated a film to his mother, whom he had lost at the age of 9.
His also died very young.
A.
Yes. I lost my mother at the same age as him and when I had the opportunity to meet him, we talked about it.
I asked him if after making the film something of that emptiness you have when you lose your mother so young had changed.
She told me, "No, I made the film, but it didn't change anything."
The memory is always on.
I think of my mother every day.
The actor Benicio del Toro, at the Intercontinental hotel, in Madrid, this Friday. Samuel Sánchez
Q.
Do you remember what you felt when you reached the age she was?
A.
Yes. I felt like she was a girl when she passed away.
She was very, very young.
Q.
Ricardo Darín turned down a role in Hollywood to play a Mexican drug dealer.
Do Latino actors still suffer from these types of clichés?
Especially in his early days, was it easy to distinguish when the offer had to do with his origins or his traits and when with his quality as an actor?
A.
I think that the clichés and stereotypes have changed a bit or that there is a bit more sensitivity, but they still exist and are still problematic.
Drug movies have given careers to many actors, I am one of them.
There are series, like
Breaking Bad
,
Narcos.
.. and movies, like
Traffic
or
Sicario
.
There is a cliché, but as in gangster movies and westerns, for example, you can explore many things about the human condition, the extremes and bring us Shakespeare: revenge, love... Like everything, it has to be in the hands of a good team of filmmakers.
I have had the opportunity to make films of this type with class A equipment, like Sodeberbergh's in
Traffic.
Now, if a drug role comes along, you know the director and he doesn't have the sensibility or he doesn't dare to make changes, then it's not worth it, but there are times when you sit down with the director it becomes something else.
I have made several films that in the script were one thing and what was made, another.
They talk, they look for angles, nuances….
The actor Benicio del Toro, this Friday in Madrid.
samuel sanchez
Q.
What role, of all the history of cinema, of all the films that excite you, would you have liked to play?
R.
Well, if I were seven years old I would be Frankenstein.
If he was 15 or 16, John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever
or
Rocky
.
But when I see Marlon Brando in
Viva Zapata
[1952], for example, I can only admire him, I don't think that I would like to play him.
He wouldn't have the courage.
The movie is in English, the guy was from Nebraska and Zapata was very much from within Mexico, but still, I see that movie and I believe it, it convinces me, I side with him.
That is incredible.
Q.
There are stars who have confessed, over the years, to having regretted turning down a role in iconic films.
Did it happen to you?
R.
Well, once, I said no to a character and then I found out that Bob Dylan was in the movie [
Anonymous,
2003] and that the scenes were with him.
Q.
And he got angry.
A.
Yes. I would have really liked to shake his hand, to meet him, to say that I met him.
Q.
You worked with Bigas Luna, with Fernando León de Aranoa, with Javier Bardem... Is there any Spanish director, actor or actress who would like to?
A.
Many.
I would like to work with Antonio Banderas, with Penélope Cruz… And I really like Carlos Vermut's films.
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