Benicio del Toro on losing mom in chldhood: 'I’m still dealing with it'

Benicio del Toro still grieves for his mother after losing her at the age of nine.

Benicio spoke about the loss of his mother to hepatitis in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter's Feb. 23 cover story.

The One Battle After Another actor, 59, recalled that his mom Fausta Genoveva Sánchez Rivera was a good balance of strict and loving. She was committed to educating him.

"I remember everything," he added. "I think some of my best acting was with her."

Losing his mom at such a young age has kept the grief very much alive.

"I’m still dealing with it," he confessed. "I had my mother for nine years. What is crazy about losing a parent at that age is that there hasn’t been one day in my life that I haven’t thought about her."

When del Toro connected with Japanese director Kaneto Shindo (The Naked Island and Onibaba) he discovered that he too lost his mother at the age of nine.

Shindo processed his grief by making a movie about her. The Sicario star wondered if that helped the director get over the grief.

"I asked, 'Did that help deal with that pain? To make the film. Did it cure something? Did it repair something?’ " del Toro recalled.

After thinking for a short while, Shindo gave a reply that the atcor could relate to: "Absolutely nothing."