Benicio Del Del Toro revives old time monster in "The Wolfman"

Del Toro, who won an Oscar playing a tough cop in drug film "Traffic" and recently was revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara in "Che," takes a surprising turn on Friday in the latest movie incarnation of a hairy, man-beast werewolf in "The Wolfman."

But in talking to the 42 year-old actor it is apparent that portraying a monster in a thriller from Universal Pictures, whose history is steeped in characters like Frankenstein and the Mummy, is a perfect fit for the serious dramatist.

In fact, Del Toro took his idea for a remake of 1941's "The Wolf Man" to Universal, and in a way the movie got its start when Del Toro was a child. Back then he had a Wolf Man poster in his bedroom and liked to play-act as the howling beast.

"There was something about those monsters that they weren't only scary, but they were cool looking," Del Toro, 42, told Reuters. "And then there's something about all of them being misunderstood," he said. "So you felt for them, like you wanted to protect them from the human beings, the lynch mob that's going after them."

In "The Wolfman," Del Toro plays an Englishman named Lawrence, who is stricken with a curse that turns him into a werewolf when the moon shines bright.

(...) The makers hired six-time Oscar winning make-up artist Rick Baker, who worked on 1981's "An American Werewolf in London."

"With Rick Baker, what do you do?" Del Toro said. "You turn into a canvas, let him paint all over your face."

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