Benicio del Toro gained his first Oscar 25 years in the past for “Traffic.”
This 12 months, he’s as soon as once more within the Academy Award dialog for his soulful flip as karate dojo proprietor — and part-time savior of immigrants — Sergio St Carlos in “One Battle After Another,” a task he says displays his personal sensibilities.
“There is a lot of me in there,” Del Toro instructed AFP forward of the Oscars gala on March 15, the place he’ll vie for greatest supporting actor honors with co-star Sean Penn, Swedish veteran Stellan Skarsgard, Jacob Elordi (“Frankenstein”) and Delroy Lindo (“Sinners”).
In Paul Thomas Anderson’s high-octane, politically charged thriller about leftist revolutionaries, white supremacists and immigration raids, Sensei Sergio gives a way of calm on the movie’s coronary heart.
Most of Del Toro’s scenes come reverse Leonardo DiCaprio, who performs Bob Ferguson, a extremely strung, and considerably strung out, former militant who should hunt for his lacking daughter (Chase Infiniti) when the previous comes again to hang-out him.
The 59-year-old Puerto Rican actor acknowledged he was stunned by the reception he has acquired for his function, which accounts for lower than quarter-hour of display time.
“It feels good, and it also can make you a little bit uncomfortable too,” he mentioned in a Zoom dialog. “I’m proud of it.”
“One Battle After Another” — which earned 13 Academy Award nominations — is the front-runner to take the perfect image Oscar.
“I did enjoy the film, and I felt that the film did have a lot of potential,” Del Toro mentioned, noting that he felt his co-stars have been “really the protagonists,” together with his to a lesser extent.
“Perhaps there’s something in a movie that is so dark… since it brings a little bit of a sense of hope,” he added of his character — although he admits he didn’t initially see him that method.
Del Toro was initially finding out enterprise at a college in California when he dropped out to pursue performing.
After some small tv roles, an look in a Madonna music video and some huge display appearances, his main breakthrough got here in 1995 with “The Usual Suspects.”
And then in 2001, he gained the Oscar for greatest supporting actor for Steven Soderbergh’s “Traffic,” through which he performed a Mexican border cop who tries to stay trustworthy amid the drug wars. He bested a stacked discipline that included Willem Dafoe and Jeff Bridges.
A second Academy Award nomination adopted for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “21 Grams.”
Del Toro, who has labored with high administrators from Soderbergh to Inarritu to Denis Villeneuve, says he was instantly drawn to “One Battle” for the prospect to work with Anderson for a second time, after “Inherent Vice” (2014).
The director “just creates a real comfortable place for creativity, for collaboration,” he mentioned.
Anderson requested him if would play a karate teacher and despatched him a photograph of a tiger… in a martial arts kimono.
But as time handed, the character developed from somebody simply serving to Ferguson on his search into extra of a “fighter for the underdog, a protector of these migrants who were looking for the American dream,” he mentioned.
In one scene, Sensei Sergio introduces Ferguson to his prolonged household — and to a number of the migrants he hides to allow them to keep away from arrest.
“I felt very, very, very, very strong about it,” Del Toro mentioned. “I felt like it needed to be treated with humanity… with respect.”
He says he’s glad his work has been honored due to what his character represents.
“There’s a heart there… I think that’s why people are gravitating towards Sensei,” he mentioned.
© 2026 AFP