viva la revolución

Only when he did, it would usually be like what happened to him while making Swimming With Sharks in 1994. The director started yelling, “He’s playing it like a fag! He’s stoned! I don’t know what he’s doing!” And then his agent would call him to say something like, “We can’t go on like this. Every movie you work on, it’s a nightmare.” And so a year later, on his first day of shooting The Usual Suspects, Benicio had good reason to worry. He’d slaved over his greaseball-gangster Fred Fenster character, and knew what he wanted to do. 

 

The result was a minor sensation, and next thing you know, he’s showing up onscreen alongside Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Johnny Depp; dating Alicia Silverstone; and, in 2000, digging deep to play an honourable Tijuana cop in Traffic, winning an Oscar for his understated efforts. And all because he mumbled.

 

“I’d steal sh*t just to see if I was going to get caught,” he says. “I liked to climb roofs. It’s dangerous. But then my dad told me not to climb roofs.” He shrugs and laughs. “What would happen if I got caught?” He laughs again, only not so loudly. “My dad is old-school. He’d chase you with the belt, and if you didn’t stop when he told you to, things would start flying.”

 

And then there’s girls. But for the Scarlett rumour, little is known about Benny and the ladies. In Los Angeles, he often holes up in a small apartment, listening to music (the Stones, Hendrix, the Who), reading (Hemingway, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Capote), painting (oils) and chain-smoking (though he says he quit). One assumes that girls join him there. But really, it’s not even clear that he has a girlfriend. Does he? “I have friends,” he says, shifting. “I have a friend.” Then, shifting again, “I have girlfriends.” 

 

“I’m selfish about my time. Are you willing to just not have me around and not checking in every day? When you’re in a relationship, you can’t just go one way, and I’ve had moments of being able to accept that responsibility, but I always have an expiration date on it. It’s tough. My longest relationship? Oh, probably one and a half years.” Was it monogamous? “I was pretty good.” He smiles. “I’ve been sort of good.”

 

So, maybe a new Benny is in the works, because the old Benny, the one with all that brooding stuff in him, would have shut up long ago, even if he was talking to a friend. “Some people you’ll never get to know, no matter how many times you hang out, and Benicio is one of those cats,” says actor Luis Guzmán, who co-starred with Del Toro in Traffic.

 

But this new Benny is thinking about stuff he never thought about before, like the recent passing of his godmother, who took over raising him after his mother died and whose casket, in Puerto Rico, he not long ago carried through the cemetery. All this, coming at a guy who has, in one way or another, spent most of his life walking on rooftops. This more thoughtful and introspective Benny says, “Have I ever thought I’m a fraud? All the time. I doubt myself. I’m a human being. But as long as I make someone happy on this freaking planet, I’m fine, I’m not a fraud. At least, that’s what I tell myself.” He presses his napkin to his lips and stands. He’s said a few things, answered some questions and raised a few more. But that’s just how Benny is. He always goes before you want him to go.

“What do I see when I look in the mirror?” he asks. “Most of the time when I look in the mirror it’s to see which way my hair is going, because it does anything it wants.” He takes off his cap. His hair is a startling, gruesome highway wreck, crumpled and twisted. He returns the cap to his head.

“After that, I make eye contact with me,” he goes on, “just 

to make sure it’s me in there. Yeah. Just to make sure it’s me.”

 

For a full version, see NOX31