As children, we all dream of what we will become when we grow up. Most seven-year-olds can list fireman, race car driver or astronaut among their intended professions, but for a young Benicio Del Toro, it was a love of the classic Universal Pictures horror movies of the 1930s and ’40s that brought to life fictional characters such as Dracula and Frankenstein, and made household names of actors like Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, that made him want to get into film. ‘I was first introduced to these movies by 8mm, four-minute, truncated versions of these horror classics made by a company called Castle Films that, as kids, we would project on the wall,’ the actor confirms. ‘It wasn’t until much later that I saw the full versions on TV.’

The interest in horror films actually became something of an obsession, and Del Toro began to collect memorabilia. ‘Most of the stuff I have came out in the late ’60s and ’70s; Famous Monsters magazines with all those classic Basil Gogo covers,’ he reveals. ‘But original memorabilia is quite scarce and hard to find. But I do have original posters of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.’
In fact, the story goes that it was one of these posters that led to Del Toro dressing up as a werewolf in his latest film. His manager, Rick Yorn, was on his way out of the actor’s house and saw a poster for the original 1941 version of The Wolfman with Lon Chaney Jr. ‘I looked at the poster, then back at Benicio – who had a full beard at the time – and said, “How would you feel about remaking The Wolfman?”’ Yorn reveals.

Del Toro clearly liked the idea, and the two proposed it to Universal, signing themselves up as producers in the process, and suddenly the actor who had previously won an Oscar for his supporting role in Traffic, a nomination for his role in 21 Grams, and a Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his role as Che Guevara in Che, was on his way to becoming a classic horror character. ‘I was in the middle of getting ready to do Che with Steven Soderbergh,’ Del Toro recalls. ‘My hair was long, my beard was long, you could say that I looked like a werewolf or a shorter version of Chewbacca. Universal went for it, and my job of actor/producer became quite exciting.’

It could be argued that in comparison to other characters from the Universal monster franchise, such as Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy, the Wolfman’s story has not been as prominent in Hollywood features over the years, something that Del Toro agrees with. ‘There are werewolf movies, vampire movies, vampire series,’ he says. ‘But we haven’t seen the original Wolfman story since it came out in 1941.’

The new movie is not a straight remake, however, and as Del Toro describes, ‘has twists and turns and a modern edge, while still honouring the original.’ Set in the 1800s, the actor plays Lawrence Talbot, a man who fled the village of Blackmoor in the UK for America after trying to deal with the death of his mother. When his brother’s fiancée, Gwen (played by Emily Blunt), turns up to tell him that his brother has disappeared, Talbot decides to head back to the village to find him. There his has to confront his family demons when he is reunited with his father (Anthony Hopkins), and discovers that his brother’s disappearance could be connected with a series of murders and an ancient curse that transforms people into hairier versions of themselves whenever there is a full moon. Once bitten by a werewolf, however, Talbot begins to transform himself, embracing the dark side he has kept hidden for so long. ‘The basics of the story are based on the original,’ Del Toro confirms, ‘with Lawrence coming home, the prodigal son idea, and the guy getting bitten by this beast, but not believing he’s going to turn into a werewolf. Then he is trapped in that tragedy, and the only way to destroy it is with a silver bullet.’

One of the most obvious differences between a film made in 2010 and its 1941 counterpart will be the make-up and special effects, and Del Toro is happy that his werewolf will be convincing to audiences. ‘One thing we wanted to do was to make sure that the make-up was strong,’ he reveals, casually dismissing that the three hours it took to apply and one hour to remove was a small hardship to undergo. ‘We were
extremely lucky that Rick Baker was definitely into it, so he did the make-up. It’s great. It has bits of The Wolfman and of The Curse of the Werewolf – the Hammer film with Oliver Reed. But our make-up is a bit different, maybe darker in some way.’

Despite the dark tone, for Del Toro the experience of making The Wolfman was a little lighter and more fun than, say, Silence with Martin Scorcese, which will be his next project: ‘It has been an opportunity to do something for your memory, an opportunity to play for fun, and to be in a different kind of movie, which is more of a fantasy. It is kind of cool to join that world as an actor.’

The film has been a labour of love, and a tribute to the actor’s childhood – will his version inspire today’s youngsters in the same way that he himself was influenced by the 1941 original? ‘It’s on the level of another classic, like The Creature from the Black Lagoon,’ Del Toro says of Universal’s original The Wolfman. ‘If it grabs you it will never let go. And if you see it as a young person it really never lets go, it stays with you for the rest of your life. I hope that our movie can do the same for a new generation.’
The Wolfman is in cinemas this month.