Benicio del Toro to take on Che role in Soderbergh's biopic
Last Updated: Friday, July 20, 2007 | 2:42 PM ET
CBC Arts
Actor Benicio del Toro is set to play Argentine revolutionary Ernesto (Che) Guevara in two films that reunite him with Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh.
Del Toro, last seen in 2005's Sin City, won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role as a Mexican policeman in Soderbergh's ensemble piece, Traffic (2000). The Puerto Rican-born actor spoke mostly Spanish in the movie about the U.S. war on drugs.
Soderbergh's two-picture epic, The Argentine and Guerrilla, is set to film in Spain for nine weeks, according to the production company, Telecinco Cinema. Both reportedly will be filmed entirely in Spanish.
This marks the second biopic about the revolutionary in recent years, following 2004's The Motorcycle Diaries, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as a young Che, and directed by Brazilian Walter Salles.
Del Toro made his mark in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects as the mumbling Freddy Fenster. He has since appeared in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Snatch and 21 Grams.
Soderbergh, who earned a directing Oscar for Traffic, recently helmed Ocean's 13 starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney.
British actor Julia Ormond (Legends of the Fall, Sabrina) and Catalina Sandino, who won accolades in her title role as a drug mule for the independent film Maria Full of Grace, will also star in the film.
Guevara, who died at age 39 in Bolivia, abandoned his medical studies to pursue the liberation of the poor of South America and elsewhere. Along with Fidel Castro, Guevara led a small group in 1956 that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba.
He then travelled the world proposing a Cuba-style revolution in many places, including Africa.
In 1967, Guevara became leader of a communist guerrilla movement in Bolivia attempting to overthrow the country's military government. On Oct. 8, he was wounded and captured in the central mountains and later executed.
In 2000, Time magazine named the revolutionary one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
