Guillermo del Toro is back just in time for Halloween.
The 58-year-old Mexican filmmaker and author has given us countless films that may or may not induce night terrors. His latest project is the horror anthology, Cabinet of Curiosities, which premiered on Netflix on October 25.
Del Toro is a giant in the film industry. Movie buffs who have seen most of his works will agree that the man has a certain film aesthetic — think Pan’s Labyrinth, Crimson Peak, and The Shape of Water.
Credit: Pan’s Labyrinth
He favors a certain palette and visual elements that make his films easily recognizable as his. Perhaps the best way to describe it is “terrifying yet stunning.” It’s the stuff of nightmares, but everything is so visually arresting that makes it hard to look away.
Let’s take a look at some of the lesser-known facts about this legend.
Del Toro’s fascination with film began at an early age.
He was just eight years old when he started experimenting with a Super 8 camera owned by his father. He made short movies using his action figures. It wasn’t long before he moved on to better cameras, but it was a step in the right direction.
“To this day, I have never been as thrilled as the day the reel came back from Kodak,” he recalled. “When I saw those images up on our projection screen I flipped. It is still the greatest thrill I ever felt in dailies.”
His grandmother tried to exorcise him repeatedly.
She was deeply religious, and his parents often left him at her house in Guadalajara, Mexico because of work. Del Toro has always been intrigued by monsters, and his Catholic grandmother wasn’t having any of it. It frustrated her to no end the way he was so captivated by ugly mythical beings.
“She exorcised me a couple of times — she threw holy water at me,” he revealed. “And I would laugh because it was ridiculous.”
Guillermo del Toro was bullied as a kid.
Del Toro was a thin, “white-blond” boy. He got into fistfights but was unable to hold his own because of his weight. He couldn’t fight off the bullies that easily, but one day, he had enough and learned to defend himself.
“So I started putting on weight, and I got better at fighting,” he admitted, “and I kept [putting on] weight.”
He was a young hypochondriac.
Credit: Los Cabos Journal
There was no Google, but his father owned a health encyclopedia, and Guillermo del Toro read it from cover to cover, convinced he was suffering from one of the many diseases listed. Hypochondriasis, or illness anxiety disorder, is the persistent and unrealistic fear that one has a serious illness.
He was convinced he had terminal cancer, septicemia, cirrhosis, and trichinosis, to name a few.
He spent a decade working as a special effects makeup designer.
He studied under Oscar-winning makeup artist Dick Smith before eventually forming his own company called, Necropia. Smith was known for his work in The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, and Amadeus. He’s often referred to as “The Godfather of Make-Up” and was entirely self-taught. He pioneered several innovations that continue to influence today’s movie makeup industry.
“To this day, many of the principles that he taught me, I still apply to my own creations,” Del Toro told Vulture. “Dick always said, “strive for realism.” So don’t strive to make a monster a monster.”
Credit: The Shape of Water
His father was kidnapped.
This isn’t something that he likes to discuss because he prefers to keep his personal life private, but he has mentioned it a couple of times. After receiving a call, del Toro had to hire a professional negotiator to whom he paid $250,000. His friend, THE James Cameron, stepped in and helped pay the ransom of $1 million. A few weeks after, the kidnappers freed del Toro’s father. That same year, he and his family moved to the US.
He spent 16 years writing scripts that never made it to the big screen.
In response to a fan question on Twitter, del Toro admitted that he had around 20 finished scripts that didn’t go anywhere. He didn’t elaborate further as to why some had been shelved. It wasn’t a waste of time, though, because he gained “experience and skill improvement.”
He has his own “house of horrors,” naturally.
Credit: Criterion Collection
There’s no denying that Guillermo del Toro likes his monsters, and so over the years, his own collection of all things macabre has grown so much that he has his personal museum in his residence, which he calls the Bleak House. He visits the Bleak House to get inspiration and activate his imagination.
Yes, he has full-size monsters, such as Faun from Pan’s Labyrinth and the Ghost Mother from Crimson Peak.
He had an epiphany after watching “Frankenstein.”
For most readers, there’s a book that ignited their love for reading. For del Toro, after watching the 1931 film Frankenstein and seeing Boris Karloff’s depiction of the monster from Mary Shelley’s book, he felt as though he was “struck by a lightning bolt of fever.” Frankenstein’s monster and Pinocchio are two of del Toro’s favorite characters.
He was exposed to magic at an early age.
As depicted in his works, del Toro loves myth, monsters, and fantasy. It turns out, his mother knew people who read tarot cards and believed in magic.
Guillermo del Toro’s most recent project, Cabinet of Curiosities, is now available on Netflix.