The musicians Benicio del Toro has a “spiritual” connection with: “They’ve made me feel braver”
One of the least surprising bits of news recently, alongside Donald Trump deciding to check the social media accounts of everyone who wants to visit America, has to be Benicio del Toro picking up a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nomination for next year’s Golden Globes.
His performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was so effortlessly cool, so brilliantly nonchalant and so film-stealing that it would be a travesty if it weren’t recognised. It’s highly likely an Oscar nod will follow for del Toro, who is undoubtedly cementing his status as one of Hollywood’s finest modern actors with a string of superb movies behind him, including Sicario, Traffic, The Usual Suspects and another PTA movie, 2014’s Inherent Vice.
That’s aside from del Toro’s recent work as one of Wes Anderson’s actors of choice, firstly on The French Dispatch in 2021 and then this year’s chaotic comedy The Phoenician Scheme, which the Puerto Rican actor took the lead role in as Anatole Korda, the ruthless arms dealer who survives a brush with death and must prove worthy of being allowed into heaven.
As with most Wes Anderson films, music plays an integral part in The Phoenician Scheme, Anderson’s long-term musical supervisor Randall Poster putting together a mix of classical, jazz and percussion from the likes of legendary drummer Gene Krupa, with one scene in particular underpinned by a drum solo from Krupa, who was a revolutionary musician in America in the 1930s.
And it was another drummer and jazz aficionado that del Toro spoke of when making his first Wes Anderson movie, the same year that The Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts sadly passed away at the age of 80 after almost 60 years behind the kit for the band.
Del Toro told The Rake: “Oh, man, Charlie Watts! He was the roll of The Rolling Stones. I think Charlie Watts is the first musician, maybe, that I listened to where I was actually feeling the story of the music in some ways. I just remember trying to follow his drumming and always getting lost and trying to figure it out all over again. I’ve been listening to his drumming since my childhood.”
Watts was always something of an outlier where The Stones were concerned; an avid jazz lover, he played as such, with a laid-back style that hugely influenced the band’s sound over the years. Contrary to the rest of the group’s love of excess and touring, Watts instead would often return home to his family and horses, remaining faithful to his wife.
He remains the only Stones member to have played on all 31 studio albums released by the group and played live with the band between 1963 and 2019, a 56-year span. Del Toro added, “We got a lot of work that he left behind that is going to outlive all of us, and that’s nice to have. For me, it’s like The Stones and The Beatles, The Who, Zeppelin, even Elton John – these are musicians I’ve listened to when I was up, when I was down… They’ve made me feel braver in life. Some connection… You could call it spiritual.”
Del Toro, meanwhile, will soon be seen alongside Ana de Armas and Cameron Diaz in a thriller called Reenactment and another film, All-Star Weekend, a movie from Jamie Foxx co-starring Jeremy Piven about NBA fans that has taken almost a decade of filming and delays to come to fruition.
