Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez (; born February 19, 1967) is a Puerto Rican actor. His accolades include an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Goya Award, and the Best Actor awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival. Films in which he has appeared have grossed over $5.9 billion worldwide.
Del Toro made his film debut in Big Top Pee-wee (1988) before his breakout role playing an unintelligible crook in the crime thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), followed by roles in Basquiat (1996), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and Snatch (2000). He received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a morally upright police officer in the Steven Soderbergh's crime drama Traffic (2000), and was nominated in the same category for playing an ex-con in Alejandro González Iñárritu's thriller 21 Grams (2003) and for playing a karate teacher in Paul Thomas Anderson's action comedy One Battle After Another (2025). He has also starred in Sin City (2005), Che (2008), Savages (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), Sicario (2015) and its sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018), and No Sudden Move (2021).
Del Toro also took franchise roles such as Dario in the James Bond film Licence to Kill (1989), Lawrence Talbot in The Wolfman (2010), the Collector in three films from 2013 to 2018 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and DJ the Codebreaker in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017). He has also worked with Wes Anderson in the films The French Dispatch (2021) and The Phoenician Scheme (2025). On television, he portrayed Richard Matt in the Showtime miniseries Escape at Dannemora (2018), for which he received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
Early life
Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez was born on February 19, 1967, in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Gustavo Adolfo del Toro Bermúdez and Fausta Genoveva Sánchez Rivera (daughter of Benicio Sánchez Castaño and Lirio Belén Rivera), who were both lawyers. He has an older brother, Gustavo, who is the executive vice president and chief medical officer at the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York City. He had a Catalan paternal great-grandfather and a Basque maternal great-grandmother. Del Toro's great-grandfather was Rafael Rivera Esbrí, one of the heroes of the El Polvorin fire in Ponce, and who would also later become mayor of that city (1915–1917).
He spent most of his infancy in Santurce, a barrio within San Juan. Del Toro, whose childhood nicknames were "Skinny Benny" and "Beno", was raised a Roman Catholic, and attended Academia del Perpetuo Socorro (The Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Help), a Roman Catholic school in Miramar, Puerto Rico. When del Toro was nine years old, his mother died of hepatitis.
Career
1987–1999: Early roles and breakthrough
Del Toro surfaced in small television roles during the late 1980s, playing mostly thugs and drug dealers on programs such as Miami Vice and the NBC miniseries Drug Wars: The Camarena Story. He appeared in the 1987 music video for the Madonna song "La Isla Bonita" as a background character sitting on a car hood. Film roles followed, beginning with his debut in Big Top Pee-wee (1988) and as Dario in the James Bond film Licence to Kill (1989). During his acceptance speech, del Toro dedicated his award "to the man himself, Che Guevara" along with director Steven Soderbergh. Del Toro was also awarded the 2009 Goya Award as the Best Actor for his portrayal of Guevara. Sean Penn, who won the 2009 Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Milk, remarked that he was surprised and disappointed that Che and del Toro were not also up for any Academy Award nominations. During his acceptance speech for the Best Actor award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Penn expressed his dismay stating, "The fact that there aren't crowns on Soderbergh's and del Toro's heads right now, I don't understand... that is such a sensational movie, Che." For the final portions of the film (shown here), del Toro shed 35 pounds to show how ill Guevara had become near the end of his life in the jungles of Bolivia. In 2010, del Toro starred in and produced the remake of Lon Chaney Jr.'s classic cult film The Wolf Man (1941). He was chosen to be the face of the 2011 Campari calendar, becoming the first male model to be featured in the Italian liquor company's calendar.
2013–present: franchise films and expansion
Del Toro played The Collector in a mid-credits scene of Marvel Studios' superhero film Thor: The Dark World (2013) and later reprised his role in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018). In September 2015, del Toro played Alejandro Gillick in the critically acclaimed Sicario, about a Mexican ex-prosecutor seeking revenge for the slaying of his wife and daughter working with a CIA special ops team to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel. Film critics widely praised his performance. Del Toro reprised his role in the sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018). In 2016, del Toro appeared in a Heineken television advertisement in its More Behind the Star series. The gag in the spot is that fans frequently mistake him for fellow actor Antonio Banderas, much to del Toro's chagrin. In 2017, he played DJ (an abbreviation for "Don't Join", as DJ viewed the Resistance and the First Order as equally corrupt), a supporting antagonist in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, who betrayed Rose and Finn to save himself when they were apprehended on the First Order's flagship.
In 2021, del Toro starred in the Wes Anderson film The French Dispatch as Moses Rosenthaler, a mentally disturbed artist. He collaborated with the director once again in 2025 with The Phoenician Scheme. Also in 2025, del Toro received critical acclaim for his role as karate teacher and community leader Sergio St. Carlos in Paul Thomas Anderson's film One Battle After Another. For his work, he received Supporting Actor prizes from the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, and the National Board of Review, as well as Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations.
Personal life
Del Toro was formerly romantically involved with Chiara Mastroianni, Alicia Silverstone and Valeria Golino. In April 2011, del Toro's publicist announced that del Toro and Kimberly Stewart were expecting a child, although they were not in a relationship. They had their daughter baptized in Puerto Rico.
On November 4, 2011, he acquired Spanish citizenship, along with fellow Puerto Rican Ricky Martin. The request was granted by the Spanish government in recognition of his artistic talents
In March 2012, he was granted an honorary degree by the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico for his influence on the cinema enterprise, during the celebration of the institution's centenary.
In 2003, del Toro became the spokesman of the educational campaign Yo Limpio a Puerto Rico, an environmental organization founded in 1997 by Ignacio Barsottelli, whose mission is to educate and mobilize Puerto Ricans in favor of recycling and the protection of the environment.
Del Toro narrated the public service announcement entitled "Coral Reef", joining the Artists to the Rescue of the Environment campaign.
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Television
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-
| rowspan="4" | 1987 || Shell Game || Pedroza || Episode: "The Upstairs Gardener"
|-
| Miami Vice || Pito || Episode: "Everybody's in Showbiz"
|-
| Private Eye || Carlos || 2 episodes
|-
| Ohara || Mike || Episode: "And a Child Shall Lead Them"
|-
| 1990 || Drug Wars: The Camarena Story || Rafael Caro Quintero || Television miniseries
|-
| 1994 || Tales from the Crypt || Bill || Episode: "The Bribe"
|-
| 1995 || Fallen Angels || Paco || Episode: "Good Housekeeping"
|-
| 2008 || Todos Contra Juan || Himself || Episode: "Juan & La Critica"
|-
| 2018 || Escape at Dannemora || Richard Matt || 7 episodes
|-
| 2021 || What If...? || Taneleer Tivan / The Collector (voice) || Episode: "What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?"
|-
| 2025 || Saturday Night Live || Himself (cameo) || Episode: "Bad Bunny/Doja Cat"
|}
Theme park attractions
{| class="wikitable"
|+
! Year
! Title
! Role
! Venue
|-
| 2017
| Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission Breakout!
| Taneleer Tivan / The Collector
| Disney California Adventure
|}
Awards and nominations
See also
- List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees — Youngest winners for Best Supporting Actor
- List of Latin American Academy Award winners and nominees
- List of Spanish Academy Award winners and nominees
- List of Puerto Rican Academy Award winners and nominees
- List of Puerto Ricans
- List of Golden Globe winners
- Cultural diversity in Puerto Rico