Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro Gómez (born 9 October 1964) is a Mexican filmmaker, author, and makeup artist.

A recipient of three Academy Awards and three BAFTA Awards, his work has been characterized by a strong connection to fairy tales and horror, with an effort to infuse visual or poetic beauty in the grotesque.

He has had a lifelong fascination with monsters, which he considers symbols of great power.

He is also known for his use of insectile and religious imagery, his themes of Catholicism, anti-fascism, and celebrating imperfection, underworld motifs, practical special effects, and dominant amber lighting.

He was ultimately unhappy with the way Miramax treated him during production, which led to his friend James Cameron almost coming to blows with Miramax co-founder and owner Harvey Weinstein during the 70th Academy Awards.

Del Toro has directed a wide variety of films, from comic book adaptations (Blade II, Hellboy and its sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army) to historical fantasy and horror films, two of which are set in Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War under the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco.

These two films, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, are among his most critically acclaimed works.

They share similar settings, protagonists and themes with the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, widely considered to be the finest Spanish film of the 1970s.

Del Toro views the horror genre as inherently political, explaining, "Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror. 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 antiestablishment."

He is close friends with two other prominent and critically praised Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

The three often influence each other's directorial decisions, and have been interviewed together by Charlie Rose.

Cuarón was one of the producers of Pan's Labyrinth, while Iñárritu assisted in editing the film.

Throughout his career, del Toro has shifted between Spanish-language films—such as Cronos (1993), The Devil's Backbone (2001), and Pan's Labyrinth (2006)—and English-language films, including Mimic (1997), Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004) and its sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Pacific Rim (2013), Crimson Peak (2015), The Shape of Water (2017), Nightmare Alley (2021), and Pinocchio (2022).

In 1997, at the age of 33, Guillermo was given a $30 million budget from Miramax Films (then owned by Disney) to shoot another film, Mimic.

As a producer or writer, he worked on the films The Orphanage (2007), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010), The Hobbit film series (2012–2014), Mama (2013), The Book of Life (2014), Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019), and The Witches (2020).

In 2022, he created the Netflix anthology horror series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, featuring a collection of classical horror stories.

The three filmmakers, referred to as the "Three Amigos" founded the production company Cha Cha Cha Films, whose first release was 2008's Rudo y Cursi.

Del Toro has also contributed to the web series Trailers from Hell.

In April 2008, del Toro was hired by Peter Jackson to direct the live-action film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.

On 1 December 2008, del Toro expressed interest in a stop-motion remake of Roald Dahl's novel The Witches in collaboration with Alfonso Cuarón.

With Chuck Hogan, he co-authored The Strain trilogy of novels (2009–2011), later adapted into a comic-book series (2011–15) and a live-action television series (2014–17).

On May 30, 2010, del Toro left the project due to extended delays brought on by MGM's financial troubles.

Although he did not direct the films, he is credited as co-writer in An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies.

With DreamWorks Animation and Netflix, he created the animated franchise Tales of Arcadia, which includes the series Trollhunters (2016–18), 3Below (2018–19), and Wizards (2020), and the sequel film Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021).

Del Toro is close friends with fellow Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, and they are collectively known as "The Three Amigos of Cinema".

He was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018, and he received a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019.

Del Toro was born in Guadalajara, the son of Guadalupe Gómez Camberos and automotive entrepreneur Federico del Toro Torres, both of Spanish descent.

Raised in a strict Catholic household, he studied at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos, at the University of Guadalajara.

While there he published his first book, a biography of Alfred Hitchcock, a director he has long praised and admired.

When del Toro was about eight years old, he began experimenting with his father's Super 8 camera, making short films with Planet of the Apes toys and other objects.

One short focused on a "serial killer potato" with ambitions of world domination; it murdered del Toro's mother and brothers before stepping outside and being crushed by a car.

Del Toro made about 10 short films before his first feature, including one titled Matilde, but only the last two, Doña Lupe and Geometria, have been made available.

He wrote four episodes and directed five episodes of the cult series La Hora Marcada, along with other Mexican filmmakers such as Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuarón.

His first movie was supposed to be a stop-motion sci-fi feature called Omnivore, about a lizard-man born in a savage land where everything tries to eat everything else.

He and his team built sets and about 100 puppets over a three-year period prior to filming.

Vandals burglarized the studio one night and destroyed the puppets and sets, which put an end to his project as del Toro decided to switch to a live-action film, Cronos.

Del Toro studied special effects and make-up with special-effects artist Dick Smith.

He spent 10 years as a special-effects make-up designer and formed his own company, Necropia.

He also co-founded the Guadalajara International Film Festival.

Later in his directing career, he formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang.