Benicio Del Toro on One Battle After Another and Latino Representation

Twenty-four years after winning his Oscar for “Traffic,” Benicio Del Toro is back in the awards conversation with a performance that reminds us why he’s one of the most compelling actors of his generation.

In Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” Del Toro plays Sensei, a character whose quiet dignity and unwavering optimism provide the film’s emotional anchor amid chaos and uncertainty.

When Anderson called, the answer was simple. “It’s PTA,” Del Toro says matter-of-factly. “He calls any actor on the planet, and they’re going to say, ‘Yeah, what do you got? Whatever, I’ll do it.’” The prospect of working alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn only sweetened the deal.

However, what truly informed Del Toro’s performance was the research. The production visited facilities in El Paso where migrant families wait in limbo, uncertain of their futures. “It was pretty moving, seeing these people, what appears to be good people, looking for a better future, being stuck in a situation that is pretty unstable and not knowing what their future would be,” Del Toro recalls. “That research that we did just made it real for everybody — for the set decorator, for the art department, for the director and for me.”

Anderson gave Del Toro a piece of direction that became a mantra for the character and a philosophy for life: “Get back on defense.” The phrase, which Del Toro remembers from working with the auteur on “Inherent Vice,” eventually made its way into the script. “Don’t get bogged down on things,” Del Toro explains. “Just keep looking, being. Think about the next play. He’s a ‘next play’ type of director, always looking ahead. I think that it’s healthy for actors to be like that. You try your best, but you can be stuck on something you did. You need to learn to let it go real quick, because tomorrow is another day.”

As one of only a handful of Latino…