Happy 54th Birthday Benicio Del Toro

He's my runner-up for "Traffic", also nominate him for "21 Grams" and "Sicario", very close to get in with "Che" as well but seriously, he's always good. Often steals the show no matter what kind of role he's got (The Fan, Sin City, Snatch), often memorable (Usual Suspects), sensitive (Things We Lost in the Fire), willing to do some serious physical stuff (The Hunted) and I'd argue, he can be a very fine romantic leading man as well (Excess Baggage). Incredibly charismatic presence also. The focus is not on his character in "China Moon" through the movie but there's something about him that keeps you intrigued.

Truly a great actor. Happy birthday.

I like him a lot but think MAR overrates him to an extent.......love him in some stuff but sometimes I don't click with him - Che for one...and he's 54 I mean, that's not young, that's entering a last career phase........he's both very good and somewhat disappointing.

There are people who think he's "better than Bardem" and um, he is not in any way fncking better than Bardem .......but still a magnetic actor and a fine one too.

Happy Birthday!

He'll flip ya...flip ya for real

I don't know if people realize how incredibly unlucky Del Toro has been in terms of projects that have been re-cast, fallen through, lost financing, or changed directors (virtually never a good thing) at the last minute over the years:

He was Schnabel's original choice for the lead in Before Night Falls but had to step back from it due to a scheduling conflict with The Way of the Gun.

His big Oscar win follow-up project, the period drama The Assumption, with Binoche co-starring and Walter Salles directing, was cancelled by the studio during pre-production.

He was originally cast in the Russell Crowe role in American Gangster when it was set up as Antoine Fuqua's post-Training Day reunion with Denzel back in 2004...obviously that fell through.

Terrence Malick was the original writer/director on the Che project, which would have almost certainly offered more of a tour-de-force opportunity for Del Toro in that role than was achievable with Soderbergh's more detached, docudrama approach. Bardem was in as Castro, Ryan Gosling as well...then Malick ran off suddenly to make The New World.

Mark Romanek was fired from The Wolfman for having too much of an actual creative vision, condemning that film to mediocrity under hack replacement Joe Johnston's direction.

And Del Toro was set in 2009 as the original lead for Scorsese's Silence alongside Day-Lewis in what later became the Neeson role, then Scorsese turned to Hugo instead and re-cast the whole thing later on.

Then most recently, Oliver Stone's semi-autobiographical character study White Lies, with Del Toro as the lead, was never able to get off the ground. Obviously every actor has their own array of stillborn projects that could have been great, but it seems to me Del Toro has had particularly dire luck in this respect. Hard to say that his full potential has ever had a chance to be fully realized on film up until now.

He most certainly IS better than Bardem the same reason Penn is better than Denzel...more intensity, more realism, more unpredictability, more magneticism.

But I think of all those praises the one that stands out is UNPREDICTABILITY. He's not only in the Top 10 of his generation, but he's easily the #1 most unpredictable & surprising actor of his generation. Hell, I'd argue few actors have that spark of unpredictable danger (never know when or how they're gonna blow) that Del Toro has turned into an art form. Dustin Hoffman used to have "it," as did Gary Oldman. Some would argue DDL and our boy Penn had "it," but I find them to be more mercurial & theatrical. Ben Mendelssohn DEFINITELY had "it" in "Bloodline", but haven't seen it in any other role. The only actor of my generation that I feel has "it" in spades is the best one, Ryan Gosling, but I know some haters will disagree there.