Guillermo del Toro was born on October 9, 1964, in Guadalajara, Mexico - and from the very beginning, his world was shaped by fantasy and darkness. At age six, he was moved to tears watching Boris Karloff’s portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster - and never looked back. By eight, he was making amateur short films with his father’s camera. He later studied filmmaking at the University of Guadalajara and spent the 1980s as a special-effects makeup artist and co-founding his own company called Necropia.
His 1993 debut feature, Cronos, won nine Ariel Awards from the Mexican Academy of Film, including best picture and best director, and took home the grand prize at the Cannes ‘International Critics’ Week. In 1998, del Toro relocated his family to the United States where he continued his filmmaking career. Once he found his footing, he created award-winning movies such as Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004), and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Much of his influence came from folklore and Catholic imagery of his upbringing and from his mother, who was a poet and an artist in Mexico. In 2017, he cemented his legacy with The Shape of Water, which won four Oscars, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for best director. His win marked the fourth time in five years that a Mexican filmmaker had taken Hollywood’s top directorial prize. In his acceptance speech, he said it plainly: “I am an immigrant, like many, many of you - and in the last 25 years, I’ve been living in a country all of our own. The greatest thing our industry does is erase the lines in the sand.” He never left his roots behind. He carried them with him - and American cinema was forever changed.
References
Britannica: Bauer, Patricia. "Guillermo del Toro." Encyclopædia Britannica, 13 May 2026, www.britannica.com/biography/Guillermo-del-Toro.
Variety: "Guillermo del Toro on the Oscars, Inclusion, 'The Shape of Water.'" Variety, 2018, variety.com/2018/film/news/guillermo-del-toro-oscars-inclusion-shape-of-water-1202720327/