Rise to Fame
His breakout in The Usual Suspects (1995) came from a deliberate choice to be completely unintelligible. Fred Fenster mumbled so badly that the other characters complained about it, and that was the point. Traffic (2001) did the rest: he spent time in Tijuana shadowing Mexican police, worked with a dialect coach to perform most of the film in Spanish, then won the Oscar, Golden Globe, and SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor. Most winning performances are built on volume. His was built on restraint.
In the Spotlight
After Sicario (2015) and a run through franchise pictures, del Toro went quiet for a few years. Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another (2025) ended that: he collected critics' prizes from the New York Film Critics Circle, National Society of Film Critics, and National Board of Review, plus his third Oscar nomination, playing a karate instructor. The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson's 2025 Cannes entry, put him at the center again. He picks directors the way other actors pick paychecks.
Side Notes
He enrolled in business school at UC San Diego, took an acting class, dropped out, and went to study with Stella Adler in Los Angeles. At 21, he was playing Dario in Licence to Kill, reportedly the youngest actor to portray a Bond villain. His mother died when he was nine. His father moved the family from Puerto Rico to rural Pennsylvania, which is a strange thing to do to a kid from San Juan. For Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he reportedly burned himself with cigarettes for a scene. The method never quite goes away.