1. He began making home movies using his father's Super 8 camera when the future film director was just eight years old. He would experiment and create short stories using toys, vegetables (even a killer potato, as he remembered later) and everything he could have thought of. In his own words it was the best beginner's movie school one could hope for. And as funny as it might seem today, for Guillermo del Toro these childish experiments would later provide him with ideas, themes and characters that maybe he couldn't have thought of otherwise. 2. You might think that Guillermo del Toro is obsessed with monsters, and you would be right. Like most kids the future film director was both scared to death and fascinated by the monsters who came at night to get him. While others simply cry for their parents or hide under the covers, Guillermo del Toro remembers he made a pact with the monsters. They would leave him alone, and he would tell their stories. Maybe it's just a marketing gimmick, but when it comes to his movies it certainly seems really, doesn't it?
3. The director likes dragons best among all imaginary, mythological creatures, and when it comes to monsters in movies the list is much longer. It ranges from Aliens and Godzilla to the legendary monster of Frankenstein or John Carpenter's masterpiece, The Thing.
4. Guillermo del Toro is not just a fan of special effects in movies - no wonder his are often amazing - but also a specialist when it comes to the art of scaring the audience. He has studied special effects and make-up for several years, founded his own company called Necropia and worked for about a decade as a special-effects make-up designer, so there is probably little he doesn't know about the subject. So the next time you see one of his movies remember that. He was even the student of Dick Smith, the mind behind the special effects for The Exorcist.
5. He owns more than 50 000 magazines and comicbooks, as well as art, maccabre artefacts, posters, movie memorabilia and on, all housed in a separate house that he bought especially for this purpose. And renamed the Bleak House, a fittingly Dickensian nod.
6. The Spanish Civil War plays a key-role in his work, as it is a major part of two of his best and most celebrated movies, Pan's Labyrinth and the earlier The Devil's Backbone. In fact he said that he regards the horror genre as inherently political.
Photo: wikipedia.org
