Benicio del Toro Biography
Benicio Monserrate Rafael Del Toro Sanchez (born February 19, 1967, in San Germán, Puerto Rico) is a Golden Globe and Academy Award winning Puerto Rican actor. He grew up in Santurce, but spent his teens and attended high school in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.
His parents, Gustavo Adolfo Del Toro Bermudez and Fausta Sanchez Rivera, were both lawyers. He has an older brother, also named Gustavo, who is a pediatric oncologist working in Manhattan.
Benicio attended Academia del Perpetuo Socorro (The Academy of Our Lady of Perpetual Help), a Roman Catholic school in Miramar, Puerto Rico. When he was nine years old, his mother died of hepatitis. At age 13, his father moved his family to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, near Chambersburg, where Benicio was enrolled in Mercersburg Academy, the same boarding school from which actor Jimmy Stewart graduated in 1928.
After graduation, Del Toro followed the advice of his father and pursued a practical degree in business at the University of California, San Diego. Success in an elective drama course encouraged him to drop out of college and study with noted acting teachers Stella Adler and Arthur Mendoza in Los Angeles, as well as at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York. Benicio hid his new career goals from his family until roles began to come his way.
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