Facts about Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro Biography
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican filmmaker whose 2017 film The Shape of Water earned 13 Oscar nominations; the film won best picture.
Del Toro also won an Oscar as director for the film. His 2021 film, Nightmare Alley, was also nominated for best picture in 2022. He won another Oscar in 2023 for best animated feature, as the director and producer of the 2022 stop-motion feature Pinocchio.
A movie fan from childhood, Guillermo Del Toro learned make-up effects and made short films in the early 1980s, then formed his own production company, Necropia.
His first big feature film, Cronos (1993), was a hit in Mexico and at Cannes, and he went to the U.S. to make his debut in Hollywood. His first American picture was Mimic (1997, starring Mira Sorvino), a troubled production that got mixed reviews, while Del Toro got raves for his stylish visual sense.
With Blade II (2002, starring Wesley Snipes), Del Toro proved he could please audiences with fast-paced thrillers. Since then, Del Toro has made his name with unusual fantasy and horror films, on television and on the big screen.
He directed both Hellboy movies (2004 and 2008, starring Ron Perlman), produced two animated Hellboy features (2006 and 2007), and executive produced the television shows The Strain (2014-17) and Trollhunters (2016-17).
Del Toro’s screenplay for his film Pan’s Labryinth (2006) was nominated for an Oscar (he lost to Michael Arndt of Little Miss Sunshine); Del Toro also wrote the screenplay for Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).
His other films include The Devil’s Backbone (2001), Pacific Rim (2013) and Crimson Peak (2015).
Extra credit
While Guillermo Del Toro was filming Mimic, the story goes that his father was kidnapped for ransom in Mexico, and that Del Toro’s friend James Cameron paid the ransom for his return.