“This scene is all about love at first sight. She comes to life, she falls in love — right there,” Del Toro says, pointing as Lanchester’s eyes alight upon her creator, Dr. Frankenstein, played by Colin Clive. “Then she has to reject the monster” — she pulls her hand away from Karloff, screaming and hissing — “and then realize she’s about to die. And she has to tell that whole story in three minutes. A good actor will take a part, and you can’t see anyone else playing it. This movie, it’s done. When it’s that good, it’s just hers forever.”
Del Toro leans back now, exhaling a cloud from his Marlboro Light. He first saw Bride of Frankenstein when he was seven. That was two years before his mother died of hepatitis, six years before his father, a lawyer, moved the family from Puerto Rico to Pennsylvania and enrolled him in boarding school, 11 years before he decided on an acting career, and 26 years before he won an Academy Award. Still, because of Lanchester, Bride of Frankenstein remains one of the movies Del Toro admires most.
“I like when an actor can do the weakness in the strength — a weakness they don’t try to sell,” he says. “A good performance, you forget it’s a movie. It pulls you in. I believe it. More than that, I experience it.”
Del Toro’s breakthrough role came in 1995, when he played Fred Fenster, an erratic and mumbling hood in the thriller The Usual Suspects. Ever since, his portrayals have been risky; eclectic, and invariably masterful. Among them are the painter’s best friend in the 1996 biopic Basquiat, Dr. Gonzo in the 1998 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, an upstanding Mexican policeman in the 2000 drama Traffic (for which he took home his Oscar, for Best Supporting Actor), and last year, a born-again ex-con in the riveting triptych 21 Grams.
Del Toro is not here to talk about his own accomplishments, though. Asked to choose five of his favorite movie scenes, he arrives at L’Ermitage, the swank Beverly Hills hotel, with six. His selections are all driven by actresses, most of them unsung. In choosing women, Del Toro is trying not to repeat himself. “I’ve caught myself only talking about the Brandos,” he says. More than femininity; however, it is dignity that distinguishes the performances. Dignity and few words.
Benny is what Del Toro’s friends call him. He is 36, taller than most movie stars (six feet two), and his much-remarked-upon hazel eyes (“I have my mom and dad to thank for that –and for the dark circles under them”) slant slightly upward at the corners, which makes him look like he’s squinting even when he’s not. He’s wearing jeans, a T-shirt he bought during Elton John’s 1984 “Breaking Hearts” tour, no socks, and a pair of brown dress shoes so tired that there’s a hole in one sole. (“The shoes have been around since before Fear and Loathing — since before I got fat,” he confesses, referring to the 45 pounds he gained for the movie.) Del Toro is not fat. He’s solid, though, and apparently the asp-like hair isn’t something he can help. Asked about a huge silver ring on his right hand that looks like the face of a madwoman, he says, “It’s Medusa. It was a gift. Because my hair is like hers.”
Cul-de-Sac, Roman Polanski’s 1966 film about a wounded criminal and his dying partner who take refuge at a beachfront castle, is the first film Del Toro wants to discuss. He’s chosen a scene in which the actress Francoise Dorleac (the older sister of Catherine Deneuve) reprimands a child, grabbing him by the ear until he screams. “The kid is messing with her record collection — maybe that’s why I connect to it,” says Del Toro, a music lover who can tell you precisely what he was listening to during the making of each of his films (Fear and Loathing: Bob Dylan’s Time out of Mind. Basquiat: the Jam. Traffic: Dolly Parton’s The Grass Is Blue and Los Lobos’ Kiko. 21 Grams: Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising and Johnny Cash’s American IV: The Man Comes Around).
