Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro will be recognized at the upcoming Platino Awards for his work on the big screen and his representation of the entire Spanish-speaking community around the world, as announced in a statement released by the organization behind the annual ceremony. 

The Platinum Honor Award will serve to honor the work of the Puerto Rican actor and producer in films such as 21 Grams, Traffic and Che, for which he won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Silver Bear and the Palme d'Or.

Del Toro will be presented the award by Spanish actress Carmen Maura, who was also recognized in 2022. The award will be presented at the tenth edition of the Platino Awards, which will be held on April 22 in Madrid .

Before del Toro and Maura, the Platinum Honor Award has been given to great Hispanic talents like Diego Luna (2021), Raphael (2019), Adriana Barraza (2018), Edward James Olmos (2017), Ricardo Darín (2016 ), Antonio Banderas (2015) and Sonia Braga (2014).

Who is Benicio del Toro?

He was born in San Germán, Puerto Rico, in 1967. At the age of 13, he moved to Pennsylvania. After graduating, he began studying business at the University of California, San Diego, which he dropped out to attend the prestigious Stella Adler acting academy. He began making brief appearances on TV series in the 1980s.

The 1990s were especially fruitful for the actor, as he would make his big screen debut in Big Top Pee-wee and appear in such prominent credits as 007: License to Kill, where he became the youngest actor to play a James Bond villain, Bigas Luna's Huevos de oro, Bryan Singer's Usual Suspects, which won him an Independent Spirit Award, Julian Schnabel's Basquiat, winning his second Independent Spirit Award. 

The year 2000 it would also be the definitive for del Toro, as he worked on two of the most outstanding films of the year — Snatch. Pigs and Diamonds, a popular Guy Ritchie film, and Traffic, by Steven Soderbergh, were other well-known films. It is that his role as Javier Rodríguez earned him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, the award for Best Actor at the Berlin Festival, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Performance and the same from the Screen Actors Guild Awards. 

Del Toro began the millennium by continuing his meteoric rise in Hollywood by participating in renowned productions such as Sin City, by Robert Rodríguez, and 21 Grams, the first American production by Mexico's Alejandro González Iñárritu, for which he was also nominated for an Oscar.