Crying wolf

It’s projection. Like all hero worship. Everything about Benicio Del Toro, from his soporific movements to his knowingly casual half-smile, not to mention that shuffling solidity that reduces a well-cut suit to a recent charity store find, exudes an assured masculinity that begs more mimicry than admiration. After just five minutes watching the casual sweeps of the hair, the dismissive hand gestures and the endless supply of shoulder shrugs, your body becomes an involuntary mirror, absorbing and repeating the gestures and tics as though it had just discovered how a man’s body ought to behave. His not-slept-yet demeanour and gravelled voice makes you want to burn the gym membership and embark on a determined regimen of Marlboro, Scotch and cheap sleeping pills.

 

Then there are the legends about having his rather aggressive way with Scarlett Johansson – every thinking man’s fantasy – after an award ceremony. In an elevator, too. He’s also said to have been dating Catherine Keener, the fantasy step-mum who would score your drugs and leave the door open when she showered. Add in Claire Forlani, star of Entourage Sara Foster, and Chiara Mastroianni, who just happens to be the daughter of Catherine Deneuve, and you don’t just want to live like Benicio, you start to really wish you were Benicio.

 

It’s probably why we’ve had him on the cover of NOX twice in the space of 12 months. There are actors who create more buzz – that vile, meaningless Hollywood-ism, usually expressed with a dose of high camp – and plenty who make more marketable films, but Will Smith rarely inspires a crisis of confidence, few crave waking up in Tom Cruise’s skin, and even Brad Pitt’s take on “new man” seems unenviably complex. He also makes pictures that you want to watch. The Usual Suspects. Traffic. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Snatch. 21 Grams. Sin City. 

 

He is talking to NOX, though, because his latest project, The Wolfman, and most questions that veer off the subject of the film he conceived, co-produced and ultimately starred in are deflected with one of those hand gestures. We play ball. The hero worship remains in tact. “My manager and I went to Universal with the idea and got a meeting with some executives,” he says, answering the obvious question. “At the time, I was in the middle of getting ready to do Ché with Steven Soderbergh and my hair was long, my beard was long, you could say I looked like a werewolf – or a shorter version of Chewbacca. Universal went for it, Rick Baker came in and my job of actor/producer became quite exciting.”

 

“It has been an opportunity to do something for your memory,” he say. “An opportunity to play for fun, and to be in a different kind of movie, which is more of a fantasy. It is kind of cool to be joining that world as an actor. It was definitely a labour of love.”

 

Del Toro has long been a self-confessed fan of The Wolf Man, a film that came out in 1941 and starred Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi, a two-man horror machine in cinema’s early days. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t an adaptation of a Victorian novel or even a 1930s comic book, but a film that Universal commissioned from the pen of head screenwriter Curt Siodmak. It was responsible for the cultural invention of werewolves changing shape under the influence of a full moon and, like vampires, being susceptible to silver bullets. 

 

“I always also asked myself what else could I do,” he says, with a grin. “It’s not necessarily just the acting I like, but making a movie… it’s just incredible fun. I really enjoy it. There are the ups and downs, but ultimately it’s a job that if you have ideas you care about, it is just amazing what you can do with them. For me it’s amazing how things happen.”

 

For a full version of this article, see NOX43.