Hollywood bad boy Benicio Del Toro has come out of hiding and does something that we rarely seem him do: open up to the media.
The brooding Puerto Rican actor sat down with Playboy Magazine’s Contributing Editor Stephen Rebello and discusses everything from his alleged sexual encounter with starlet Scarlett Johansson, to racial profiling. He even gives fans tidbits on his upcoming remake of the 1950s chiller The Wolf Man.
Del Toro’s Playboy interview is currently available at newsstands, but just for our readers, we’re highlighting some selected quotes directly from the man:
On being typecast: “I do get the tortured-soul roles. I’d like to play a romantic lead, but I don’t necessarily get those offers coming my way. It’s not like I’ve got a chip on my shoulder about it, though, because I’ve been lucky to have filmmakers and casting directors help me just find a freaking job, as well as let me explore good stories and characters. I can’t complain if studio guys see me as the dark force. Whether it is because of skin color, thought, action, it doesn’t matter.”
On West Side Story: “It’s a great movie, and I don’t look at it like, ‘Oh my God, what a disaster of stereotypes.’ Of course, it has stereotypes, but I don’t think it’s a film other Puerto Ricans feel is typically stereotypical either. If it makes people see things a certain way, I wouldn’t put it on the movie. It’s like blaming crime on rock and roll.”
On experiencing racial profiling: “Yeah, I’ve been profiled for being Puerto Rican, for having a different kind of last name or for looking a different way. It’s happened to me in Italy, England, here at home, and it has even happened in Puerto Rico. But that doesn’t mean I think all Italian, British, American and Puerto Rican people or cops are like that. … I was driving, my hair was long, I had on a leather jacket, I was blasting tunes, and I got pulled over. And the policeman said, ‘Is this your car?’ and he ran me on his computer.”
On losing his virginity: “I was about 13 when I lost my virginity, and that first experience was totally a nervous situation. It was in a house with someone I had known only a little bit. She was slightly older, and she’d done it before … I wasn’t exactly a natural, but it was good, yeah. I had wanted it to happen for a while.”
On his romantic history: “I remember liking girls in prekindergarten in Puerto Rico, when I was only three or four. I wasn’t a 1.000 hitter or anything – I don’t think anyone is – but I had a girlfriend all through high school, so that was kind of cool.”
On monogamy: “For monogamy to happen in a relationship, it has to be organic. I don’t know what makes it organic, though.”
On filming intimate scenes with Halle Berry: “She was completely absorbed by her role, so you had to respect that. I think she was quoted as saying I was fun on the set. Maybe I wanted to relax the situation by joking around as a way to get over that. Maybe I was nervous and that was one of the ways to deflect that other tension.”
On other ways to deflect sexual tension on-set: “Take a cold shower.”
On what the after-life is like: “I don’t have any idea. I’ve got wishful thinking, though. There’s a heaven, and it’s a place where you can just…catch up. My wishful thinking doesn’t necessarily mean you have to follow a particular religion. Heaven is a place for everybody and everything. … Whatever you say about heaven or the hereafter, I say, ‘Let it rip.’”
On moving to the U.S. from Puerto Rico as a teenager: “It was tough. I was mostly on my own. I couldn’t communicate that well. I spoke mostly Spanish. I had some family around, but I also looked into myself. I began to paint.”
On the universality of sports: “Playing sports, basketball especially, was the bridge that helped keep me from becoming completely lonely. … Sports gave me a universal language. That’s the essence of sports, in a way.”
On the diversification of Hollywood: “Inevitably Hollywood has become more universal and worldly in some ways, hiring directors from different ethnic backgrounds. There are more roles than ever for ethnics. When I started out as a working actor I was always told X, Y and Z about why they didn’t hire me.”
On his favorite horror films: “My movie was Creature from the Black Lagoon. It seemed as though Wolf Man and Frankenstein were taking place more in the north country, but the Creature from the Black Lagoon could have been happening in Puerto Rico because of the heat, the water, the tropical atmosphere. I have an original poster from Creature from the Black Lagoon in my house.”
On his connection to horror films: “Now if I go to someone’s house for a party and I don’t know anyone, and they have a poster of King Kong, it makes me feel at home. It’s an opener. I’m at ease. … I was always in love with those monsters. They’re misunderstood. Why are people coming at them with torches? Why are they shooting at them?”
