Benicio Del Toro finds the voting process at the Cannes Film Festival to be amusing.
The 51-year-old actor is set to preside over the jury of Un Certain Regard at the annual film festival in the south of France, and Del Toro – who served on the jury for the 2010 Cannes Competition – has revealed details of the regimented voting process.
He recalled: "You vote really early in the morning the day of the awards. It’s like, you get up at 8am and you go to this castle and they close the doors and you have to vote for everything in that day and then there’s a lot of like, back and forth: ‘We’ve got to vote again.’"
Del Toro served on the 2010 jury alongside the likes of Tim Burton and Kate Beckinsale, and he admitted they laughed a lot about the process.
He told IndieWire: "Not about the movie, but laughing about the process.
"We got to that point where even if you really care about a movie that was not getting any votes, you had to laugh. You go, ‘Okay, well I see the world a little bit different.’"
Meanwhile, Del Toro has also bemoaned the decline of cinemas in America.
However, the actor remains committed to the platform, revealing he watches "very little TV".
He said: "They’re in danger in the numbers here in America.
"I understand that they’re not in danger in the [entire] world. In some places, it’s booming.
"Me personally, I’m a movie guy. I grew up liking movies. I watch all movies. I watch movies from all over the world. I don’t think that movies can disappear. The two-hour, the three-hour format. I see very little TV."
Benicio Del Toro says Cannes Festival voting process is amusing
