New Faces Of 1996

An Actor With a Slur on His Character

THE ONLY THING WRONG with the movie "Usual Suspects" was that Benicio Del Toro's character died too soon--couldn't the bad guys have whacked Stephen Baldwin instead? Del Toro played Fred Fenster, a con man with cool threads and the most marvelously slurry voice anyone had heard (or misheard) in years. Reviewers were enchanted, but Del Toro makes no grand claims: "I'm not Jack Nicholson. I'm not Brando. But I do mumble."

Del Toro grew up in Puerto Rico and later in Pennsylvania, on a farm. He was a business major at the University of California, San Diego, and was planning to be a lawyer when a freshman acting class made him rethink a few things. Del Toro played a slew of small TV and movie roles, but it was after "Usual Suspects" that Holly-wood really started dialing his number. "The phone, the phone," he moans. "I need to get a portable." This year, he'll appear in the off-kilter baseball movie "The Fan," with Robert De Niro, as well as in films by bad boys Abel Ferrara and Julian Schnabel. Says the actor, "I like anything that's three-dimensional, anything I can believe in -- even if it's fantastic, surreal or from another planet." Del Toro himself appears to be all of the above.

FREDERIC GAFNER