Guillermo del Toro

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Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro, 2006
Born	Guillermo del Toro Gómez October 9, 1964 (1964-10-09) (age 43) Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
Occupation	Film director, producer, screenwriter and special makeup effects designer
Years active	1984 - present
Awards won BAFTA Awards Best Film not in the English Language 2006 Pan's Labyrinth Goya Awards Best Original Screenplay 2006 Pan's Labyrinth Other awards George Pal Memorial Award 2008 Lifetime Achievement Best Original Screenplay 2006 Pan's Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro Gómez (born October 9, 1964) is an Academy Award-nominated Mexican filmmaker. He is one of the film directors known as the Three Amigos (Spanish: Cineastas, Trío de Amigos) that include Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Professional career 1.3 Future projects 2 Filmography 2.1 As director 2.2 As producer 3 References 4 External links

Biography

Early life

Del Toro was born October 9, 1964. He studied in the Instituto de Ciencias, University of Guadalajara[1], and was raised by his devout Roman Catholic grandmother. Del Toro first got involved with filmmaking when he was about eight years old. He executive produced his first short film, Doña Lupe, in 1986 at the age of 21. After that he spent eight years as a special effects make-up designer, and formed his own company, Necropia. He also co-founded the Guadalajara-based Mexican Film Festival. Later on in his directing career, he formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang.

In 1998 his father was kidnapped in Mexico, which prompted del Toro to move abroad to live as an expatriate. He currently lives in Westlake Village in Los Angeles, California with his wife and his two daughters, Mariana and Marisa.

Professional career

Guillermo del Toro has directed a wide variety of films, from comic book adaptations (Hellboy and Blade II) to historical fantasy and horror films, two of which are set in Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War under the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco. These two films, El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone) and El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth), are among his most critically acclaimed works. They share similar settings, protagonists (young children), and themes (including the relationship between fantasy/horror and the struggle to live under authoritarian or dictatorial rule) with the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, widely considered to be the finest Spanish film of the 1970s^[1].

Del Toro, as interviewed on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show, lists several fascinations that have become regular features in his films: "I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things." Del Toro's work notably frequently includes monsters. In recent interviews, he has stated that he has always been "in love with monsters. My fascination with them is almost anthropological... I study them, I dissect them in many of my movies: I want to know how they work, what the inside of them looks like, [and] what their sociology is." He also mentions as influences Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and Jorge Luis Borges.

He is close friends with two other prominent and critically praised Mexican filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu. The three often influence each other's directorial decisions, and have been interviewed together by Charlie Rose. Cuarón was one of the producers of Pan's Labyrinth. All three received Oscar nominations when the 2006 Academy Award nominations were unveiled in January 2007 - del Toro for his original screenplay for Pan's Labyrinth (the film itself received 6 nominations, including Best Foreign Language Film), Cuarón for editing and co-writing Children of Men and Iñárritu for producing and directing Babel. Del Toro turned down The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the wardrobe to do this film. Del Toro also received a Nebula Award for Best Script for his Pan's Labyrinth script.^[2] He turned down a chance to direct I Am Legend, One Missed Call (2008) and Halo and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to work on Hellboy II: The Golden Army

In addition to having close relationships with other directors, del Toro seems to have a working relationship with actor Ron Perlman. Many of his films have included Perlman as the main or secondary actor. This includes Blade II and the Hellboy movies in which he had to petition for seven years to have Perlman as the role of Hellboy due to the fact that the producers originally wanted someone better known.^[3]

Future projects

In April 2008 del Toro was officially announced as director of The Hobbit in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series alongside executive producer Peter Jackson.^[4] Del Toro stated that "Contributing to the 'Lord of the Rings' legacy is an absolute dream come true." For the next four years, he and his wife and two daughters^[5] will be moving to New Zealand^[6]. As a consequence of his taking on The Hobbit, the projects he had been planning to take on in the next few years have been put on hold. Del Toro remarked in one interview "It's a great cancel."^[7]

After The Hobbit and its follow-up, Del Toro is scheduled to direct four films for Universal; Frankenstein; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; a remake of Slaughterhouse-Five; and Drood, an adaptation of a Dan Simmons novel due for publication in February 2009. He still has his sights set on filming At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft. Drood is expected to be his first project after the two films set in Middle-earth. These projects will fill up his schedule until 2017.^[8]

Del Toro said his Frankenstein would be a faithful "Miltonian tragedy", citing Frank Darabont's "near pefect" script, which evolved into Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein.^[9] Del Toro said of his vision, "What I’m trying to do is take the myth and do something with it, but combining elements of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein without making it just a classical myth of the monster. The best moments in my mind of Frankenstein, of the novel, are yet to be filmed [...] The only guy that has ever nailed for me the emptiness, not the tragic, not the Miltonian dimension of the monster, but the emptiness is Christopher Lee in the Hammer films, where he really looks like something obscenely alive. Boris Karloff has the tragedy element nailed down but there are so many versions, including that great screenplay by Frank Darabont that was ultimately not really filmed."^[10] He has also cited Bernie Wrightson's illustrations as inspiration, and said the film will not focus on the monster's creation, but be an adventure film featuring the character.^[11]

Filmography

As director

Year	Film
1993	Cronos
1997	Mimic
2001	The Devil's Backbone
2002	Blade 2
2004	Hellboy
2006	Pan's Labyrinth
2008	Hellboy II: The Golden Army
2011	The Hobbit - "Lord of the Rings" prequel

As producer

Year	Film	Director
1985	Dona Herlinda and Her Son	Jaime Humberto Hermosillo
1998	Un Embrujo	Carlos Carrera
2001	The Devil's Backbone	Guillermo del Toro
2002	Asesino en serio	Antonio Urrutia
2004	Crónicas	Sebastián Cordero
2006	Pan's Labyrinth	Guillermo del Toro
2007	The Orphanage	Juan Antonio Bayona
2008	Rudo y Cursi	Carlos Cuarón
	While She Was Out	Susan Montford
	Cosas insignificantes	Andrea Martínez

References

External links

• Guillermo del Toro at the Internet Movie Database
• Guillermo del Toro at Allmovie
• Del Toro Films Fansite
• Premiere Magazine: Inside Del Toro's Sketchbook
• Angels and Insects: The Cinematic Spawn of Guillermo Del Toro
• GreenCine Daily interview
• Audio Interviews
• Films in Review interview
• Del Toro Webcast on BAFTA.org

v • d • e Films directed by Guillermo del Toro Director Cronos (1993) • Mimic (1997) • The Devil's Backbone (2001) • Blade II (2001) • Hellboy (2004) • Pan's Labyrinth (2006) • Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) • The Hobbit films (in development for 2011 and 2012) Other The Orphanage (2007) · While She Was Out (2008) ·

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