Guillermo del Toro
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Guillermo del Toro | |
|---|---|
| Born | Guillermo del Toro Gómez |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, producer, screenwriter and special makeup effects designer |
Guillermo del Toro Gómez (born October 9 1964 in Guadalajara, Jalisco) is an Academy Award-nominated Mexican film director.
Biography
Early life
Del Toro studied in the Instituto de Ciencias, and was raised by his grandmother. Del Toro first got involved with filmmaking when he was about eight years old. He executive produced his first feature in 1986 , at the age of 21. Before that he spent nearly 10 years as a make-up designer, and formed his own company, Necropia, in the early 80s. 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. Del Toro currently lives in Westlake Village, a bedroom community in Los Angeles.
Professional career
He 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 during or in the aftermath 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 also 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.
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 and Borges. In one of his interviews[citation needed] he calls himself "a lapsed Catholic - that likes Taoism," though in the same interview he also said "once a Catholic - always Catholic."
He is also 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, have been interviewed together by Charlie Rose, and 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 directing Children of Men and Iñárritu for producing and directing Babel.
Guillermo has said that one of his future projects will be directing on The Coffin based on the critically praised graphic novel written by Phil Hester, and drawn by Mike Huddleston. He'll be directing Deadman, The Witches, a story adaption by Roald Dahl, The Champions which the film is based on a British television series and At the Mountains of Madness.
Del Toro has expressed interest in adapting Frankenstein as a faithful "Miltonian tragedy". He has read a draft by Frank Darabont which he considered near perfect.[1] He'll also be directing Tarzan as he says "I'd love to create a new version that is still a family movie, but as edgy as I can make it," Del Toro said. "There are strong themes of survival of a defenseless child left behind in the most hostile environment."
Director filmography
- Doña Lupe (1985)
- Geometria (1987)
- Cronos (1993)
- Mimic (1997)
- El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone) (2001)
- Blade II (2002)
- Hellboy (2004)
- El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) (2006)
- Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008)
- 3993 (2009) (announced)
- At the Mountains of Madness (2010) (announced)
Producer filmography
- El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)
- While She Was Out (2008) (post-production)
- Caleuche: El llamado del mar (2008)
- Death and Me (in development)
References
- ^ Mike Sampson (2007-10-26). "Guillermo talks!". JoBlo. Retrieved 2007-10-27.
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External links
- Guillermo del Toro at IMDb
- 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
- Letras Libres essay on El Laberinto del Fauno (in Spanish)
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