Unusual Suspect
US Weekly
Faces & Places Spotlight
By Carrie Bell
September 18, 2000
Forever cast as the villain, Benicio Del Toro isn't the tough guy everyone wants him to be.
Age: 33.
Hometown: Santurce, Puerto Rico. After his mother died of hepatitis when he was 9, he and his brother moved to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, with his father, a lawyer and a farmer.
Current residence: Los Angeles.
Father knows best: Del Toro says his father ran a strict household. "I had to wake up at 4:30 A.M. on weekends to work on the farm," he recalls. "I hung out with the pigs until it was too late to hang out with my friends."
Out of the woods: Del Toro went to the University of California at San Diego to study business, but he switched his major to drama during his freshman year. He has since appeared in more than 20 films including The Usual Suspects and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and is currently playing a kidnapper in The Way of The Gun with Ryan Phillippe.
Wrestlemania: Del Toro says that the though characters he has played can get him in trouble in real life. "Guys need to prove they're badder than I was in some film. A couple of drinks in them, and they challenge you to arm-wrestle."
Latin lover: Del Toro has been linked to Minnie Driver and Alicia Silverstone, but he laughs at stories that he's a ladies' man. "That's the cross that Latin men have to bear," he says. "It started with Valentino, and now Ricky Martin and I have to carry the torch. But rumors are always better than the truth."
(Photographed by Trevor O'Shana
at Elco Welding and Engineering
in Venice, California on August 9, 2000)