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By Jose Jara

Benicio del Toro to receive the Honorary Award at the 10th Edition of Premios PLATINO

The Puerto Rican actor and producer will be recognized by Premios PLATINO as one of the great Hispanic talents in Hollywood and as a key representative of Ibero-America worldwide.

The actor will receive the award during the 10th Premios PLATINO gala, which will be held in Madrid on April 22, 2023

Benicio del Toro will receive the Honorary Award in the upcoming award ceremony of Premios PLATINO, which will be held on April 22, 2023 in Madrid, Spain. The Puerto Rican actor and producer will be honoured in recognition of his acting career, which has brought him the praise of critics as well as from the industry as a whole, reflected in his numerous awards, and for his work as a representative of the Ibero-American community worldwide.

With this award, Del Toro follows the footsteps of Carmen Maura, who won the last Honorary PLATINO Award, with winners of the previous editions including outstanding Ibero-American figures such as Diego Luna (2021), Raphael (2019), Adriana Barraza (2018), Edward James Olmos (2017), Ricardo Darín (2016), Antonio Banderas (2015) and Sonia Braga (2014). The handing over of the award to the Puerto Rican actor promises to be one of the most exciting moments of the Premios PLATINO gala, which will be held in Madrid on April 22, 2023.

10TH EDITION OF PREMIOS PLATINO

In their tenth edition, the awards will once again celebrate the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions, their diversity, their cultures, and their audio-visual industry. 

The extensive media coverage of the awards contributed to the presence of the best of Ibero-American culture at the awards ceremony presented by Lali Espósito and Miguel Ángel Muñoz, televised by 24 channels in 21 countries that emphasized the wide dissemination and scope of the event.

During previous editions, the awards have celebrated the diversity of their cultures by awarding the Best Ibero-American Film to Argentine, Chilean, Colombian, Spanish and Mexican films. Since its creation in its fourth edition, the award for the best series has gone to Argentina, Cuba, and Spain. In animation, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Peru have been nominated; in the best documentary category, the nominees are Brazil, Chile, and Spain, and in the début film category, alongside regions with larger-scale production appear countries such as Guatemala, Paraguay, and Venezuela.

Premios PLATINO is promoted by EGEDA (Audiovisual Producers Rights Management Entity), with FIPCA (the Ibero-American Federation of Cinematographic and Audiovisual Producers), and the Community of Madrid and Madrid City Council. Premios PLATINO is also supported by the World Tourism Organisation and the Ibero-American Motion Picture Academies and Institutes, and unite the great talents of the institutes of the 23 Ibero-American countries to extol the most outstanding productions and creators of each year with twenty-two awards and a PLATINO Honorary Prize.

Since their first edition in 2014, they have been striving to disseminate Ibero-American audiovisual productions, so that the successes achieved in the most prestigious festivals also translate into excellent results in commercial theatres and so that our cinema and fiction series get the distribution they deserve.

DEL TORO, A LATIN STAR IN HOLLYWOOD

Del Toro is one of the significant figures of today’s cinema and series, one of the major Hispanic talents in Hollywood, and an ambassador of the Ibero-American regions. 

Born in San Germán, Puerto Rico, in 1967, Benicio del Toro moved to Pennsylvania at 13. After graduation, he began to study business at the University of California in San Diego, which he decided to leave to take classes at the prestigious Stella Adler acting studio. Already in the late 1980s, Del Toro began to appear in small parts of television series, playing roles in productions such as Miami Vice and the mini-series Drug Wars: The Camarena Story.

The 1990s were especially fruitful for the actor, who would make his big-screen début with Big Top Pee-wee and appeared in the credits of such high-profile productions as007: Licence to kill, with which he would become the youngest actor to play a James Bond villain, Huevos de Oro (Golden Balls) directed by Bigas Luna, The Usual Suspectsdirected by Bryan Singer, for which he received the Independent Spirit award, Basquiat, directed by Julian Schnabel, which garnered him his second Independent Spirit award, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, directed by Terry Gilliam.

The year 2000 would see the final explosion in recognition of Del Toro, who worked in two of the biggest blockbusters of the season: Snatch, the popular Guy Ritchie film, and Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh. His role as Javier Rodriguez won him the Oscar for the best-supporting actor, the best actor award of the Berlin Festival, the Golden Globe for best performance by a supporting actor, and the Screen Actors Guild Award.

Del Toro began the new century with a meteoric rise in Hollywood by participating in renowned productions such as Sin City by Robert Rodríguez, or 21 Grams, the first US production directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, for which he was also nominated for an Oscar. He would work again with Steven Soderbergh in the two-part biopic the director made on Ché Guevara, who the actor played in Ché, the Argentine, and Ché: Guerrilla, for which he won the Palme d’Or for best performances at the Cannes Film Festival.

During the 2010s, the Puerto Rican actor continued his career by combining his roles in successful blockbusters with his commitment to independent films in which he has worked with renowned directors. Accordingly, his appearances in productions such as Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars: Last of the Jedi, and Avengers: Infinity War were paralleled by his participation in films such as Escobar: Paradise Lost, directed by Andrea Di Stefano, in which he was executive producer and for which he received a nomination for Premios PLATINO, Inherent Vice, director: Paul Thomas Anderson, A Perfect Day, director: Fernando León de Aranoa, and Sicario, director: Denis Villeneuve.

The actor and producer would return to television in 2019, starring in Escape at Dannemora. This series would garner him an Emmy nomination, while his latest appearance on the big screen was in The French Dispatch, directed by Wes Anderson. Del Toro will appear soon in Reptile on Netflix, a film directed by Grant Singer and starring Justin Timberlake, Alicia Silverstone, and Frances Fisher.