Related Resources • Spanish Adds to Traffic's Realism • Spanish at the Movies    From Other Guides • Hollywood Movies • Traffic (Hollywood Movies) • Traffic Flows (Civil Liberties) • Traffic Review (Dramatic Movies)    Elsewhere on the Web • Traffic (official site) • Benicio Del Toro Zone (official site) • Benicio del Toro: El actor del momento (El Nuevo Día) • Benicio Del Toro Filmography (Washington Post) • Trafficking in a Rare Commodity: Benicio del Toro (Independent Feature Project) • Benicio Del Toro (Mr. Showbiz) • Internet Movie Database

Benicio Del Toro made Oscar history when he received the first acting award for a Spanish-speaking role. But even though he grew up in Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico, the Spanish he used in the bilingual movie Traffic didn't come naturally to him, he has said in interviews. Del Toro played the role of Mexican constable, and his role is mostly in Spanish along with some Mexican-accented English.

In order to get the Mexican accent down for his Traffic role, he worked with a dialect coach and spent some time in Tijuana, Mexico, to talk to police officers and listen to Mexican slang. For the truth is that the Spanish he grew up with isn't quite the same as the Spanish of Mexico.

Here's what Del Toro had to say about his language abilities in an interview for the Independent Feature Project:

"I was born in Puerto Rico and I lived there till I was 12, so my mother tongue is Puerto Rican Spanish. We kept it going when we moved to the States. I talk to my dad in Spanish and my brother in Spanglish. So we're bilingual to an extent. One thing is that it's easier for me to speak about film in English because I've learned it all in English. With my Spanish, I've got to look for words and it takes time."

Although Del Toro could become a household name in the next few years, there wasn't much in his early history to indicate he would become a top actor. Born in 1967 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, he recalled in a 1997 interview with the Miami Herald that he was a troublemaker when he was a boy. As both of his parents were lawyers (his mother died when he was 9), they encouraged him to follow that tradition and go into law. He went to college to major in business, and he got his start in acting when he auditioned for a college theater role and got the part. He switched his studies to acting. "I never hated the idea of becoming a lawyer. It always appeared to me as if lawyers (particularly criminal lawyers) who litigate in court do something very similar to what an actor has to do," he said.

Del Toro got his first big break as an actor as a guest star on Miami Vice. His first movie was the unmemorable Big Top Pee-wee of 1988, where he played the rule of Duke the Dog-Faced Boy. Among his better-known movies are China Moon (1994), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. His most recent movies in addition to Traffic are Bread and Roses (2000), The Way of the Gun (2000), The Pledge (2001) and Snatch (2001).

The only Spanish-language film listed in an unofficial filmography is a cameo role in Huevos de oro, a 1993 Spanish comedy that starred Javier Bardem, a well-known Spanish actor who was nominated this year for the Academy's Best Actor. Del Toro played the role of Bob, a resident of Miami.

Del Toro said in the 1997 interview that he feels some responsibility being a Latino actor. But "the fact that my name is Benicio Del Toro should not imply that I must be thought of only as a Hispanic actor. Logically, I don't have a problem with playing Latino characters, and would play them more frequently if they were better written," he said.

Del Toro seems to have got his wish with Traffic.