12:08PM, Mar 04, 2009
The Mexican director has won critical acclaim for movies ranging from the Spanish Civil War fantasy-horror Pan's Labyrinth to the Hellboy series.
He was raised by his devout Roman Catholic grandmother who he credits with firing up his imagination and love of fantastical monsters.
Del Toro first got involved in film-making when he was eight and went on to study at the Instituto de Ciencias, University of Guadalajara.
He executive produced his first short film, Doña Lupe, in 1986 at the age of 21, and went on to become a special effects make-up designer, forming his own company Necropia.
After making a couple of horror shorts, he made his feature debut in 1992 with Cronos, a reworking of the vampire legend that went on to win the International Critics Week prize at Cannes.
Following this success, he made his first Hollywood film, Mimic (1997), starring Mira Sorvino as an entomologist who genetically creates an insect that turns on its maker.
(Del Toro would later claim that his first brush with the American film industry was more traumatic than the kidnap of his father, an incident - happily resolved - that prompted him to move to the USA).
In 2001, he directed the critically-acclaimed The Devil's Backbone, a disturbing drama set in an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War.
His supernatural exploration of life under the authoritarian rule of General Franco was continued six years later with the goundbreaking Pan's Labyrinth.
In the meantime, he successfully entered the mainstream with Blade II, a slick sequel which pitted vampiric daywalker Wesley Snipes against the Reaper threat of Luke Goss's Nomak.
Riding on the success of Blade II, Del Toro was handed Hellboy, which gave him the opportunity - despite studio opposition - to cast Cronos star Ron Perlman as the Big Red One.
He followed this critical and box office hit up with Pan's Labyrinth, an imaginative tour de force about the step-daughter of a sadistic officer in Franco's army escaping into an eerie fantasy world.
In 2008, he turned down I Am Legend and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to make the Hellboy sequel The Golden Army, which featured Perlman's Hellboy in a fight against Goss's Prince Nuada.
Upcoming projects include the Lord of the Rings "prequel" The Hobbit, which he intends to make in two parts.
