San Sebastian: Benicio Del Toro Wins Donostia Award

The actor received the award before the screening of his latest work, 'Escobar: Paradise Lost'

Benicio Del Toro paid homage to his native Puerto Rico as he picked up the Donostia Award for lifetime achievement at the San Sebastian International Film Festival Friday.

"I want to dedicate this award to the piece of land where I come from, where I was born, where I learned to throw rocks and had them first thrown at me," the actor said at the award ceremony held in the Kursaal conference center. "Where I learned to take risks and where I learned not to do things just to do them."

Cuban actor-director Jorge Perugorria introduced the Oscar-winning actor as a "rebel of the profession [of acting]," just before Del Toro thanked the festival and praised the "exquisite food found in every corner of this city."

Del Toro received the award before the screening of his latest work, Andrea DiStefano's Escobar: Paradise Lost in the festival's Pearls Selection.

Earlier in the day, Del Toro spoke to journalists about how he respected the actors and actresses who came before him, how Steven Soderbergh's Che was his most "complicated" role and how not to be thin-skinned in Hollywood.

"An actor has to have a short memory. There's a lot of rejection, and you can't wallow in it. You have to have a short memory," Del Toro said.

Even so, the actor spoke from memory as he told an anecdote about seeing a picture of a haggard fisherman and upon asking what had happened to him was told, "the effort."

"I look at this prize and I answer the same to myself — the effort," he said.