Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro Gómez (Spanish: [ɡiˈʝeɾmo ðel ˈtoɾo]; born 9 October 1964) is a Mexican filmmaker and actor. His work has been characterized by a strong connection to fairy tales, gothicism, and horror, often blending the genres, with an effort to infuse visual or poetic beauty in the grotesque. He has had a lifelong fascination with monsters, which he considers symbols of great power. Del Toro is known for pioneering dark fantasy in the film industry and for his use of insectile and religious imagery, his themes of Catholicism, celebrating imperfection, underworld motifs, practical special effects, and dominant amber lighting.

Throughout his career, del Toro has shifted between Spanish-language films—such as Cronos (1993), The Devil's Backbone (2001), and Pan's Labyrinth (2006)—and English-language films, including Mimic (1997), Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004) and its sequel Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Pacific Rim (2013), Crimson Peak (2015), The Shape of Water (2017), Nightmare Alley (2021), Pinocchio (2022), and Frankenstein (2025). As a producer or writer, he has worked on the films The Orphanage (2007), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010), The Hobbit film series (2012–2014), Mama (2013), The Book of Life (2014), Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019), and The Witches (2020).

In 2022, he created the Netflix anthology horror series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, featuring a collection of classical horror stories. With Chuck Hogan, del Toro also co-authored The Strain trilogy of novels (2009–2011), later adapted into a comic-book series (2011–15) and a live-action television series (2014–17). With DreamWorks Animation and Netflix, he created the animated franchise Tales of Arcadia, which includes the series Trollhunters (2016–18), 3Below (2018–19), and Wizards (2020), and the sequel film Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans (2021).

Del Toro is close friends with fellow Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu. Del Toro's accolades include three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, and a Golden Lion. He was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018, and received a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019.