On October 9, 1964, Guillermo del Toro Gómez was born – Mexican producer, director and screenwriter. Today, on the anniversary of his birth, we will present the profile of the famous director.

Guillermo del Toro was born and raised in the Mexican city of Guadalajar, where he initiated a film festival. He became interested in this field quite early, at the age of 8. His career began when he collaborated with Oscar winner Dick Smith, under whose watchful eye del Toro learned about make-up and special effects. Later, he acted alone, founding his own film company – Necropolis in the early 1980s. He then started making smaller projects, short films, and directing episodes of Mexican series. He made his feature debut at the age of 21 with the premiere of the film Dona Herlinda and Her Son (dir. Humberto Hermosillo), in the production of which he took an active part.

His first independent work was Cronos . At that time, he was responsible not only for directing, but also for the script for the film. The production was awarded with an award in Cannes, as well as with Saturn. She also obtained two nominations. This had a huge impact on the further course of del Toro’s career. He was recognized as one of the best directors and more and more people wanted to collaborate with him.

Although his passion is to create chilling horror movies, you can find entirely different genres in his filmography. He wrote the screenplay for three parts of The Hobbit and has directed many films, including Hellboy, The Shape of Water, Pacific Rim, Labyrinth of the Faun and Crismon Peak. As a producer, he was also active in the animations of How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda and Puss in Boots. He received 35 nominations and 17 awards for his work, including an Oscar for the film The Shape of Water in 2017