Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro (full name Guillermo del Toro Gómez) was born on October 9, 1964, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He studied at the Instituto de Ciencias and was raised by his grandmother, an ultraconservative Catholic. Del Toro became interested in filmmaking while still a teenager. Later, he studied makeup and special effects with Dick Smith, the creator of The Exorcist. Del Toro worked as a makeup artist for about 10 years; in the early 1980s he founded his own company, Necropia. At the same time, he was involved in producing and directing Mexican television programs. He was also one of the founders of the Guadalajara Mexican Film Festival. Del Toro achieved his first success by winning nine awards from the Mexico Academy for the film Cronos (1993). Largely thanks to this success, Del Toro made his first Hollywood film, Mimic (1997), and upon returning to Mexico founded his production company, Tequila Gang. His next film was The Devil's Backbone (2001), about a ghost from the Spanish Civil War. The film received positive reviews from critics and audiences. Del Toro returned to Hollywood once again. In 2002, he became the director of the sequel Blade II, starring Wesley Snipes. In June 2009, together with Chuck Hogan, a well-known screenwriter and recipient of the Dashiell Hammett Award, he released the book The Strain, which tells of vampirism as a viral epidemic. It also includes his traditional theme of the interaction between totalitarian regimes (in this case, Nazism) and the dark side of the world. The theme of a child as a guide between worlds is also given an unexpected expression in the novel. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California. He is the recipient of the Nebula Award for the screenplay of Pans Labyrinth.