Benicio Del Toro: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

1. Dr Gonzo - Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)

You know how people complain that Johnny Depp plays the same role in every single film, regardless of what the character is? That's because he peaked in 1998's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam's long-gestating adaptation of Hunter S Thompson's bonkers non-fiction tale of heading to the city of sin to cover the Mint 500 motorcycle race...and taking a lot of drugs instead. Like, a lot of drugs. Don't make us list them out to you, we've got a word limit here. Depp took the main part as Raoul Duke, the Thompson analogue in the book - probably for legal reason - and did a pretty convincing impersonation of the infamously insane journalist, safari hat and all. You've got enough to be getting on with between Depp's Duke and former Monty Python animator Gilliam's psychedelic recreations of the character's drug-fuelled hallucinations, which means that Benicio del Toro's performance as Dr Gonzo is the delicious icing on the cake. And we all know that the icing is the best part of any good cake. Compared to del Toro's monstrous, gluttonous "lawyer" Raoul Duke is a grounded and together character, the one who has to keep his friend on the straight and narrow despite knocking back the same cocktail of uppers, downers and hallucinogenics. To prepare for the role del Toro packed on a staggering 45 pounds (18 kg) in nine weeks before filming began, and delved into the personal life of Oscar Zeta Acosta, Thompson's real-life friend and inspiration for the Gonzo character. Which mainly amounted to discovering what a nutter the guy was, as the actor is totally transformed into an overweight, insane paranoid freak who feeds kids LSD and begs his friend to throw a toaster into the bathtub whilst he listens to Jefferson Airplane. He's totally committed to being totally crazy and it's awesome. Not that every performance has managed to scale those (admittedly lunatic) heights...