Background

Guillermo del Toro was born on October 9, 1964, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, to automotive entrepreneur Federico del Toro Torres and Guadalupe Gómez. He was raised in a Catholic household and described his upbringing as "morbid," stating that it made him intolerant of authoritarianism.

Education

Having a taste for the macabre at an early age, del Toro decorated his family home with decidedly spooky elements. He developed an interest in making short dark fantasy films with Planet of the Apes toys and his father's Super 8 camera since he was only eight. He created about 10 short films till high school.

He later attended the film school, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos, at the University of Guadalajara, from where he graduated in 1983. He subsequently learned the art of movie makeup from legendary film makeup artist Dick Smith.

Career

At the age of 21, del Toro executive produced his first feature, Dona Herlinda and Her Son (1985). Del Toro spent almost 10 years as a makeup supervisor and formed his own company, Necropia in the early 1980s. He also produced and directed Mexican television programs at this time, and taught film.

Guillermo del Toro began his filmmaking career in 1993 with the Spanish-language Mexican horror drama film Cronos, starring Federico Luppi and Ron Perlman, which depicted the story of an antique shopkeeper who undergoes a vampiric transformation. His first feature film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 66th Academy Awards, even though it failed to earn a nomination.

Del Toro followed up this work with Mimic, a 1997 Miramax production that starred Mira Sorvino and Josh Brolin in a tale of gargantuan bugs run amok in New York City. The project soured del Toro a bit on working in the confines of Hollywood, and for his next feature, he turned toward Spanish history.

In 1997, he received a $30 million budget from Miramax Films for his next directorial venture, Mimic, an American science fiction horror film in which New York City is infested by gargantuan insects. While his relation with Miramax soured during the production of the film, and he did not succeed in obtaining a final cut, he later released a director's cut version in 2011.

The Devil’s Backbone (2001), co-produced by fellow filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, is a serious, stark tale focusing on a group of children struggling to survive at a haunted orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. The film, for which he again collaborated with Federico Luppi, was received favorably by critics and audiences upon its release.

Del Toro won more widespread notice with his comic-book adaptations Blade II (2002), starring Wesley Snipes, who reprised his role from the 1998 film Blade for the sequel, which was a box office success and received mixed to positive reviews from critics.

Next up came another comic-book adaptation - Hellboy, with Ron Perlman cast as the brawny, demonic titular character in an outing that was both action caper and comedy vehicle. The eponymous film earned critical acclaim and also succeeded at the box office, prompting him to write and direct the 2008 sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

In between the two Hellboy movies, del Toro went back to the Spanish Civil War setting to write, produce, and direct the Spanish-language dark fantasy drama Pan's Labyrinth (2006), the story of a girl forced to live with a fascist stepfather retreat into a magical, frightening world where she's revealed to be a princess, with a blurring of what might be reality versus an imaginary escape from trauma.

Having earned more than $80 million worldwide, Pan's Labyrinth also became one of the top-grossing foreign releases in the United States. The work was also a critical smash, ending up on many reviewers’ year-end lists and receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. It received five other Oscar nods as well, winning for art direction, cinematography, and makeup.

In April 2008, Peter Jackson hired him to direct the live-action film trilogy based on The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, but due to the financial issues faced by MGM, the project was delayed. While he left the project in May 2010, he was still credited as the co-writer for the three installments of the series.

Guillermo del Toro became an author in 2009 with the release of his vampire horror novel The Strain, co-written with Chuck Hogan, which spawned two sequels, The Fall (2010) and The Night Eternal (2011). In 2014, he directed the pilot of a TV series for FX, based on the trilogy, which ran successfully for four seasons.

While having a bit of an eye for robots and mechanical warfare in Hellboy II, del Toro brought the idea to a full culmination in Pacific Rim (2013), starring Idris Elba and Charlie Hunnam, a big-budget outing that saw humongous mechanical warriors battling similarly gargantuan alien monsters.

In fall 2015, del Toro returned to the world of artful horror with Crimson Peak, featuring Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, and Tom Hiddleston in a story about a house that has memory and induces terror. The movie released in October 2015, during the Halloween season, and was received with generally positive reviews.

In 2017, del Toro turned in one of the signature works of his career with The Shape of Water. A sci-fi romance about a mute janitor who falls in love with a man-fish hybrid held in a government lab, The Shape of Water claimed the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and led the pack with seven nominations for the year's Golden Globes, producing a win for del Toro in the category of Best Director. The Shape of Water is his most celebrated work which earned nearly $195 million worldwide against a budget of $19.5 million. It was nominated for 13 Oscars and won four.

His production company and Disney had jointly announced at the D23 Expo in 2009 the original animated project, Trollhunters, which he eventually moved to DreamWorks in late 2010. The first season of the show, released worldwide on Netflix on December 23, 2016, became the most-watched kids original ever on the network and is considered to be one of the best children's animated series.

Achievements

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  Guillermo del Toro's two films The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth set in the backdrop of authoritarian leader Francisco Franco's Spain, are among his most critically acclaimed works. Pan's Labyrinth gave him international recognition, earning $80 million worldwide, and became one of the top-grossing foreign releases in the United States.
  
  The Shape of Water is his most celebrated work which earned nearly $195 million worldwide against a budget of $19.5 million. It was nominated for 13 Oscars and won four, apart from numerous other accolades including two Golden Globe awards and three BAFTA awards.
  
  Guillermo del Toro was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame during their gala held on March 12, 2015, in Austin, Texas.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

    (Inspired by one of the most terrifying children's book se...)

    2019
  • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

    (The adventure follows Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an...)

    2012
  • The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

    (In the company of thirteen dwarves and the wizard Gandalf...)

    2013
  • The Devil's Backbone

    (His father killed in the brutal fighting of the Spanish C...)

    2001
  • Pan's Labyrinth

    (Amidst a civil war, armed with only her imagination, youn...)

    2006
  • The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies

    (The epic conclusion to the adventure of Bilbo Baggins, wh...)

    2014
  • The Shape of Water

    (From master storyteller, Guillermo del Toro comes an othe...)

    2017
  • Hellboy II: The Golden Army

    (Hellboy and his team of paranormal outcasts must face off...)

    2008
  • Blade II

    (The sword-wielding Blade returns to fight the Reapers, a ...)

    2002
  • Hellboy

    (As dark forces gather to hasten the Apocalypse, Hellboy f...)

    2004
  • Cronos

    (Guillermo del Toro made an auspicious and audacious featu...)

    1993
  • Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

    (Sally, a young girl, moves to Rhode Island to live with h...)

    2010
  • Crimson Peak

    (A young woman is menaced by ghosts in the crumbling mansi...)

    2015
  • Mimic

    (From acclaimed director, Guillermo Del Toro comes "a terr...)

    1997
  • Pacific Rim

    (Humanity has long been under attack from the Kaiju. Pilot...)

    2013

Religion

Growing up in a Catholic household led to del Toro butting heads with his grandmother. She worried about his obsession with drawing monsters and, later, his interest in special effects makeup that skewed to the gory side of things. In an attempt to recover her grandson’s soul, she tried to exorcise the devil from him - twice. Despite such a strict, religious upbringing, del Toro now considers himself a lapsed Catholic. He uses a lot of religious relics and artifacts in his films.

Politics

Guillermo Del Toro considers the horror genre to be inherently political, and claims horror, like fairy tales, can be delineated into two ideological categories: "One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of fairy tale: Don’t wander into the woods and always obey your parents. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and anti-establishment." Politically, del Toro has described himself as "a little too liberal." Most of the villains in his movies share authoritarian traits.

In 2020, del toro showed his support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during the 2020 United States presidential elections. He also criticized Donald Trump.

Views

In March 2018, organizers of the Guadalajara International Film Festival announced the creation of the Jenkins-Del Toro International Film Scholarship, a $60,000 annual award for a promising Mexican filmmaker to study abroad at a renowned film institute.

In 2020, Mexican directors Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón, have joined hands with industry colleagues to set up a fund to support Mexican industry workers who lost their jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Quotations: "The sign of a true friendship is when you can forgive success."

"History is ultimately an inventory of ghosts."

"I’m never ironic, I’m never postmodern, ever. I’m always earnest."

Personality

Guillermo del Toro’s sincere love of monsters has been embedded in him since he was a small child in Mexico. He claims that monsters used to crowd into his room at night, and he made a pact with them: If they let him go to the washroom, he’d be their friend for life.

Aside from his main home, del Toro owns a second residence in Westlake Village, California, for the sole purpose of holding his various large collections. Known as Bleak House, the Tudor-style mansion houses models of creatures from del Toro’s films, recreations of characters from movies like 1932’s Freaks, and various pieces of artwork.

Drawings from Disney's Fantasia, comic books, paintings, and other artwork fills the house, allowing del Toro to "see the brushstroke or the Wite-Out" and "understand how they did it." The artwork goes on tour sometimes, allowing the public to peruse del Toro’s unusual collection of movie props, themed rooms filled with life-sized figures, and rare books.

Legendary make-up artist Dick Smith had been a huge influence on del Toro throughout his life. He bought Smith’s make-up kit when The Exorcist came out in 1973 and applied for his make-up course in New York in 1987. It was around this time that they met, and Smith soon became a close friend and mentor to del Toro.

Del Toro considers himself a book-person first and foremost, and there were two books that shaped his universe as a child. One was an encyclopedia of health (which led to an obsession with anatomy), and the other an encyclopedia of art.

Interests

• anatomy

• Politicians

  Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris

• Writers

  Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins

• Artists

  Dick Smith

• Music & Bands

  Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, The Bee Gees

Connections

Guillermo del Toro was previously married to Lorenza Newton. They started dating while they were both students at the Instituto de Ciencias in Guadalajara. They parent two daughters, Marisa del Toro and Mariana del Toro. The couple decided to head separate ways and divorced in September 2017.

Father:

Federico del Toro Torres

During the production of Mimic, del Toro’s father was kidnapped from Guadalajara, Mexico, and held to ransom for 72 days. The kidnappers wanted $1 million for his safe return, but del Toro had put all of the money he had into Mimic. Things were looking dire until his good friend James Cameron stepped up and paid the ransom.

Mother:

Guadalupe Gómez

colleague:

Octavia Spencer

colleague:

Jessica Chastain

ex-spouse:

Lorenza Newton

Daughter:

Marisa del Toro

Daughter:

Mariana del Toro

Friend:

James Cameron

Del Toro and director James Cameron are close friends and have stood by each other on many occasions including the Weinstein brothers incident.

colleague:

Anne Hathaway

colleague:

Idris Elba

colleague:

Charlie Hunnam

References

• Guillermo del Toro on Twitter