Benicio del Toro assures that Latin cinema will once again have “its moment in Hollywood”

Puerto Rican actor Benicio, the bull He celebrates that the new generations are placing “minorities” at the center of American fiction and, given the rise of other cinemas such as African-American or Asian, he is clear that “Latinos will once again have their moment in Hollywood.”

Del Toro will receive the Platino de Honor 2023 award this Saturday in Madrid and in an interview with EFE he says that, although “there are still stereotype problems” for minorities, including Latinos, things “They’ve changed a bit in America.”

“If you’re Latino, that’s fine, why don’t you play Latino? The thing is to look for complexity in those characters, which sometimes you can, but other times you can’t”analyzes Del Toro, who with this award from the Ibero-American industry joins interpreters such as Edward James Olmos, Antonio Banderas or Carmen Maura.

Whoever played key characters in modern Latin American history such as Che Guevara or the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar in fiction also alludes to the fact that breaking these vicious circles does not depend only on the actors.

“That depends on who you are working with because the cinema is not made alone, it is not only the actor who makes decisions, it is a group work in which you have to collaborate a lot, I think that perhaps in the United States things have changed, the new generations are improving them”, considers.

The interpreter, winner of awards such as the Oscar, the Golden Globe, the Bafta, the Berlin Silver Bear or the Cannes Palme d’Or, claims to feel very “honored” to receive this award from the Ibero-American industry.

“It is truly an honor to be a part of it and to be recognized for my roots,” points out the Puerto Rican, who has developed his career in the United States but has also worked with directors such as the Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu or the Spanish Bigas Luna and Fernando León de Aranoa.

In this sense, he defends that it does not matter so much where the actor works as long as he “seeks the truth” of the stories he interprets. “It doesn’t matter if you do it in Hollywood, in Spain or in Mexico, although it is true that sometimes Latino or European cinema is more like independent American cinema,” think.

A cinema where he has “forged”: “When I started there was a wave of independent cinema with Soderbergh, Spike Lee, Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez… I had that opportunity and there, in independent cinema, one becomes more pure.”

Thus, he explains that Hollywood cinema “is not that it is more comfortable because it has a bigger budget”, but because it can have “more time” to shoot.

“In Latin cinema, time is more limited, it is more on the fly, but what you have to do is look for the truth of the story, of the character, and that is just as difficult on both sides”esteem.

Puerto Ricans watch a lot of Ibero-American cinema, “although not all”, contemporary and old, and with that knowledge they appreciate that there are films “that mark a moment or an era” even years after they were released.

“Ibero-American cinema continues to be made and as long as it continues to be made… I think that now there are more opportunities, more possibilities and there is more cinema as such than when I started”think.

Regarding the social cinema that is made in the region and that gives good international results, he believes that it “has been on the rise for a while.” An admirer of Oliver Stone and the political cinema that this American director “manages to do within Hollywood” despite the fact that this industry “does not want to do it”, he calls for “freedom of expression” for all the films because “there are always two sides to every story ”.

Del Toro is, at 56 years old, the tenth actor to receive the Platinum of Honor and although he has worked with the most popular film directors, he is still hungry for new challenges.

“I would love to go back to work in Spain, I have never worked with Almodóvar and I would like to, I have not worked with Scorsese…”lists this actor who gave up law school for “something wonderful”: “Stand in front of an audience and make them feel something.”

With information from EFE