Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro (born October 9, 1964, Guadalajara, Mexico) is a Mexican director, screenwriter, and producer who is known for imbuing horror and fantasy films with emotional and thematic complexity. His body of work, which includes Hellboy (2004), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water (2017), reveals both his penchant for fusing various film genres and an impulse to reinterpret their rules. At the same time, del Toro draws freely from a range of other influences, including classic literature, art, comic books, magazines, television, cinema, and science. His films are also known for their rich and evocative imagery, emphasis on practical effects over computer graphics, and stunning character design—especially his terrifying but often sympathetic monsters, which are usually born in the pages of del Toro’s sketchbooks. The relationship between fathers and sons is a recurring theme in del Toro’s works.

Del Toro, who makes movies in Spanish and English, has found success in both the artistic and commercial spheres, perhaps in part because he rarely distinguishes between high and low art. He is frequently mentioned alongside fellow filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu—the trio has sometimes been informally dubbed the Three Amigos. Collectively, they are credited with being at the vanguard of Mexican filmmakers whose movies have resonated with audiences in the United States and other parts of the globe.

Early life and influences

Del Toro’s childhood was as outlandish and uncanny as the movies he would later make. His father was a car dealer who won a $6 million lottery, and his mother was a poet, artist, and homemaker who dabbled in tarot and the occult. Though his mother indulged del Toro’s interest in monsters and horror movies, his parents became largely absent after winning the lottery, traveling more often and staying in Mexico City for long stretches. It was his relationship with his maternal great-aunt (whom he referred to as grandmother) that left perhaps the deepest mark on del Toro’s upbringing and the religious symbolism of his films. Firmly bound to Roman Catholic teachings, she was horrified by his fascination with monsters and the supernatural, which found its way into his sketches and writings; on occasion she tried to exorcize him with holy water and mortify his flesh (ritualistic suffering aimed at subduing sinful desires) by hiding upturned bottle caps in his shoes. Del Toro was also frightened by the notions of religious punishment that she impressed upon him. He told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017:

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I formed a bond with her that was full of guilt, because she explained to me things like original sin, and that was really difficult for me to understand. The notion of sin, the notion of damnation—there is a lot of pain in the Catholic religion in Mexico; there is a lot of guilt.

As a child, del Toro met with terror in two realms: In his sleep he was tormented by “lucid nightmares” that sparked horrifying visions of paranormal creatures, and in his waking life he was bullied at school. He put on weight as a means to fight back. He has said he was also drawn toward the genre of horror because of his frequent encounters with death, at an early age in his family, on the streets of Guadalajara, and in the catacombs of a local church.

The first film del Toro recalls seeing was the 1939 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, whose gothic elements struck a chord with him. His lifelong interest in horror films began when he watched James Whale’s 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at the age of six, deeply moved by Boris Karloff’s poignant portrayal of the monster. He counts Alfred Hitchcock and Federico Fellini among his many cinematic influences.

When he was about eight he began producing amateur short films using his father’s Super-8 camera, initially animating his collection of action figures and toy monsters before involving his friends and family as performers by the time he was in high school. He later studied filmmaking at the University of Guadalajara. He subsequently learned the art of movie makeup from legendary film makeup artist Dick Smith and spent much of the 1980s working as a special-effects makeup artist, cofounding Necropia, a special-effects company.

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Finding a start in Spanish and American films

Del Toro wrote and directed several episodes of the 1988–90 television horror series Hora marcada (“Marked Hour”) before creating and helming his debut feature film, Cronos (1993), a refreshing take on the vampire mythos. The movie, about the effects of a device that confers immortality, won nine Ariel Awards from the Mexican Academy of Film—including best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best original story—and also received the International Critics’ Week grand prize at the Cannes film festival. Cronos’s international acclaim led to American film studio Miramax producing his next movie, Mimic (1997), a science-fiction horror story about deadly genetically engineered insects that imitate humans. However, his creative vision for the film was significantly hamstrung by interference from studio executives Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Del Toro refused to acknowledge the film’s theatrical cut as his own upon its release.

Though he did not do Hollywood productions for a few years, Del Toro relocated his family to the United States in 1998, living in what he has called “involuntary exile,” after a traumatic incident in which his father was kidnapped and ransomed months later. Del Toro has remained largely tight-lipped about the incident but has publicly acknowledged director James Cameron’s help in hiring a hostage negotiator during the distressing episode.

In 2001 del Toro cowrote and directed the critically acclaimed El espinazo del diablo (The Devil’s Backbone), a ghost story set in an orphanage in the final days of the Spanish Civil War. Del Toro then returned to Hollywood with his commercially successful comic-book adaptations Blade II (2002), starring Wesley Snipes, and Hellboy (2004), which he also had a hand in writing. He filmed a sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, in 2008.

Major successes: Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water

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Mixing elements of folklore and Roman Catholicism with the violent history of post-civil war Spain, del Toro wrote and directed the visually dazzling and thematically intricate El laberinto del fauno (2006; Pan’s Labyrinth) The film, which tells the story of an adolescent girl’s fantastical journey to the underworld, features some of del Toro’s most imaginative and elaborately designed monsters. Often considered his most impressive and lyrical work, it won Academy Awards for makeup, art direction, and cinematography. In 2013 he cowrote and directed the sci-fi action film Pacific Rim (2013), pulling inspiration from the mecha genre (typically involving giant robots) popular in Japanese anime, manga, and video games—most famously popularized by the Gundam franchise. The film proved to be more popular worldwide than in the United States. His dark and disturbing gothic romance film Crimson Peak (2015), set in a decrepit haunted mansion, met with mixed reviews.

Del Toro then cowrote and directed the bewitching fantasy romance The Shape of Water (2017), telling the tale of a tender romance between a nonverbal woman and a mysterious humanoid amphibious creature. It was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won four, including for best picture. In addition, del Toro was awarded the Oscar, the Golden Globe Award, and the BAFTA Award for best director.

His next directorial effort, Nightmare Alley (2021), was a film noir about a scheming carnival worker (Bradley Cooper) who meets a manipulative psychoanalyst (Cate Blanchett). It was based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, and del Toro cowrote the script. In 2022 he codirected and cowrote Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, a stop-motion animated drama that reinterpreted C. Collodi’s classic literary character. The dark tale is largely set in 1930s Italy during the reign of fascism in the country. Ambitious and visually stunning, the film won the Oscar for best animated feature. In 2025 del Toro directed Frankenstein, a lush, eloquent retelling of Shelley’s classic that treated the Creature (played by Jacob Elordi) with nuance and empathy.

Television and other works

Del Toro contributed to the screenplays for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and its two sequels (2013 and 2014). In addition, he created the TV series The Strain (2014–17) and Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (2016–18)—based on novels that he wrote with Chuck Hogan and Daniel Kraus, respectively—as well as a sequel to the latter, 3Below: Tales of Arcadia (2018–19). Del Toro also created the Netflix anthology series Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022– ). Each episode was directed by someone chosen by del Toro and features a different macabre tale.