El diecinueve de febrero/February 19th

¡Feliz cumpleaños a ... Benicio del Toro (Benicio Monserrate Rafael del Toro Sánchez)! (1967-     )

"Lo importante es tratar. Tratar con ganas." -Benicio del Toro

Photo from vanityfair.com. Click HERE. 

A Puerto Rican actor and director with Spanish roots (he has a great grandfather from both the Basque country and Catalonia, and he has held dual Spanish citizenship since 2012), del Toro had his breakout role as Fred Fenster in the 1995 movie The Usual Suspects. He has been in multiple movies since, including The Fan (with Robert DeNiro), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Traffic (for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), 21 Grams, Che, Sicario, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (see him talk about his role in the movie on Telemundo's show Un Nuevo Día, HERE). Born in Puerto Rico to two lawyer parents, del Toro lost his mother when he was nine, and he soon after moved with his father and brothers to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where he attended Mercersburg Academy for high school. Following his father's suggestion, he went to the University of California, San Diego to study business, but when he found success in an elective drama course there, he decided to leave college and study acting. He studied with noted acting teachers Stella Alder and Arthur Mendoza (see him brag about his acting skills in this comedic Heineken commercial, HERE). In the 80s, del Toro had roles on television shows such as Miami Vice and Drug Wars: The Camarena Story, mostly as drug dealers and criminals. He was in Madonna's 1987 video La Isla Bonita (sitting in a car in the background), and then in a string of movies as minor characters before truly breaking out (see above!). When del Toro won the Goya Award for his role in Che (really two biographical movies, The Argentine and Guerrilla, together known as Che), he spoke about the importance of the movie being seen in the United States (something his friend Sean Penn also advocated) and about the difficulty of truly capturing a character: "Lo importante es tratar. Tratar con ganas." (The important thing is to try. To try with ganas) (no English word quite captures ganas  -- the best I can do is "desire/passion"). See del Toro's full speech HERE.

For resources for teaching Spanish, Level 1 through AP, CLICK HERE.

Other February 19th birthdays:

Photo from estudiantes.elpais.com.
Click HERE. Great interview (in Spanish).

Rodolfo Neri Vela (1952-      ): The first Mexican astronaut, he flew on the NASA space shuttle mission in 1985. He is a professor of engineering at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) and has written many books and articles. Like many astronauts, he has spoken about the perspective on life going to space has given him: "From space I see myself as one more person among the millions and millions who loved, live, and will live on Earth. Inevitably, this makes one think about our existence and the way in which we should live to enjoy, [and] to share, our short lives as fully as possible."

Miguel Batista (1971-      ): A former professional baseball player from the Dominican Republic, he is now and author and poet.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (1953-      ): Former President of Argentina (2007-2015), she and her husband, Nestor (who preceded her as President), are responsible for a brand of politics in Argentina known as "Kirchnerismo." She was defeated by current Argentinian President
Mauricio Macri in the 2015 election.