Benicio Del Toro

Birth Details:
February 19, 1967
San German, Puerto Rico

For much of the 1990s, actor Benicio Del Toro's body of work was like a slowly smoldering fire. Despite several prior film appearances, most people actually think his portrayal of Fenster in 1995's The Usual Suspects was his first role. It was the first film in which his strange, inimitable quirkiness came through so strongly, though; with Fenster's odd mumblings and clipped accent, the film set a standard that Del Toro hasn't yet failed to achieve in subsequent roles. Though several of the films that followed Suspects barely even registered with critics or at the box office -- such as 1996's Basquiat and 1997's Excess Baggage -- Del Toro consistently turned in surprising, refreshing performances that demonstrated a deep thoughtfulness. 1998 brought a supporting role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Hunter S. Thompson (who authored the book on which the film was based) predicted the film would end Del Toro's career. And for a couple of years it seemed he was right -- neither audiences nor critics knew what to do with the film's drug-addled abstraction, and Del Toro seemed to fade off into the distance.

The actor's turn-around point came in 2000, however, a year that started a fire that shows no signs of dying down. With leading roles in Way of the Gun and Traffic, Del Toro suddenly seemed to be everywhere, and audiences were definitely taking notice. Critics took notice as well -- his role in Traffic garnered him a whole slew of awards and nominations, including the Oscar for best supporting actor. He was top-billed in the heist romp Snatch (written and directed by Madonna's husband, Guy Ritchie), though he actually only had a cameo role in the film. Clearly, Del Toro has made an impression, an impression that was only confirmed by further chillingly noteworthy performances in films like 2003's 21 Grams or 2005's Sin City. Born in Puerto Rico into a family of lawyers, he was expected to follow the same path and majored in business in college until a secret audition for a play led to his discovery of his true passion. Del Toro has been pursuing that passion for close to two decades now -- so just what celestial influences are behind his incredible talent?

Benicio Del Toro's Tarot Reading

Del Toro's talent comes in large part from the tremendous preponderance of water signs in his chart, which lends him the unique ability to connect on a deeply intuitive level with the characters he portrays. With only two of his planets -- and outer ones at that, Uranus and Pluto -- in an earth sign (Virgo) and the rest of his planets in Pisces, Scorpio and Cancer, Del Toro truly has an active imagination. He's likely to be extremely emotional and may have trouble staying objective about things or telling fact from fantasy. With this many water signs in his chart, he needs some outer force in his life to act as a stabilizer, to ground him when he's adrift on a sea of emotion. Most of his planets lie in Pisces, which indicates that he exists largely in the realm of 'possibilities' -- he's full of ideas and likely has difficulty in choosing and manifesting just one or two of them.

Del Toro was born under a Pisces Sun, right on the Aquarius-Pisces cusp. Those born on a cusp possess a mixture of qualities of the two signs they straddle. Del Toro's basic personality incorporates elements of Aquarius's eccentricity and love of innovation with Pisces's dreaminess, imagination and sensitivity. He has spoken in several interviews about his love of painting, a very Piscean art form, and about spending hours alone as a child just letting his imagination run its course. So it seems that Pisces has the greater hold over his personality -- but the quirky eccentricities of his on-screen characters, including strange speech patterns, physical tics and more, could only come from Aquarius's influence. Del Toro is also reported to be a very hard worker, one who works tirelessly with the writers and directors on his films to come up with as perfect a scene as possible. This could also be attributed to that Aquarius-Pisces cusp, since those two signs work together to bring concrete expression to all his ideas and imaginings.

Two Sun aspects in his chart work against one another: First, his Sun trines Mars, the passion planet, lending him lots of vitality, enthusiasm and ambition. This aspect actually promotes agility in sports, and one way that Del Toro learned to fit in at his American high school was by utilizing his tall frame -- he's six-foot-four -- to become a basketball star. Working against this aspect, however, are his Pisces Sun in general (since Pisces is a much more internal, emotional sign than an external, physical one) and his Sun-Neptune square. This aspect heightens Pisces's escapist tendencies and saps this sign's already low-key energy. It's an aspect that could actually denote that
Del Toro is dishonest or susceptible to others' lies, but it's most likely related more to his acting than to a weak moral fiber. With his Jupiter trining Saturn, Del Toro has loads of integrity. This aspect helps to temper his Piscean idealism with logic and principle.

Not only are most of Del Toro's planets in water signs, he actually has a stellium of planets in Pisces, creating a particular intensity of Piscean energy. With his communication planet, Mercury, in this intuitive sign, his ideas make up in imagination what they lack in practicality. This placement also suggests that Del Toro has some very real psychic abilities -- water signs in general and Pisces in particular are associated with intuitive perception. This is likely quite a gift when it comes to acting; he knows how to interpret a role and how to slip right into the psyche of the character he's playing. Furthermore, his Mercury conjuncts Venus, a very beneficial aspect for an actor. It lends him a natural charm and popularity, a gift with words and self-expression -- but since Mercury opposes Uranus in his chart, that self-expression tends to be rather, well, odd. He can't stand routines and fairly hums with nervous energy; this aspect highlights Aquarius's side of his cusp birthday and underscores his intelligence, as does Mercury's opposition to Pluto, the planet of raw power. This aspect is very valuable for his acting career, as it lends him the ability to dig deeply into a character, to ignore superfluous detail and to get directly to the heart of the matter. As a result, his communication is very direct, powerful and convincing.

With Venus in Pisces, love is all-important to Del Toro. He makes a sweet, affectionate friend and a tender, sensitive lover. With his Venus trining Jupiter, he gains a lot from partnerships in general, both romantic and platonic, and with Venus conjuncting Saturn, he takes love very seriously. However, Venus opposes Uranus and Pluto in his chart, indicating some potential for relationship trouble. Del Toro is intensely passionate and may fall in and out of love fast, being rather independent and more interested in the initial excitement and rush of a relationship than in the long-term process of getting to know someone. His Mars in Scorpio also indicates a very passionate nature, someone who could become quite vindictive when crossed or betrayed.

With several trines between his outer planets, Del Toro is slated to achieve great personal and spiritual evolution in this lifetime. His Jupiter trines three planets (Saturn, Uranus and Neptune), enhancing his Piscean humanitarianism and spiritualism and lending him a great deal of integrity. He is very connected to his own spiritual ideals and wants to teach others about them. Furthermore, his Saturn trines Neptune, indicating that he feels great spiritual responsibility to do good works. With this trine, Del Toro receives a real gift, for it indicates that his fame and success as an actor aren't counter to his higher personal growth. In fact, his public success is directly proportional to his spiritual evolution. With all these factors supporting philanthropy, humanitarianism, integrity and good works, it seems Del Toro would have made a good lawyer after all, had he chosen to follow in the path of his family! And his Jupiter in Cancer indicates that his family and their beliefs are very important to him. However, with his involvement in films like Traffic, which explores alternatives to the failed drug war, Del Toro is spreading his personal message to the masses perhaps more effectively than he could from a courtroom.

Birth data sources: www.beniciodeltoro.com, www.imdb.com