“Frankenstein” director Guillermo del Toro first read the novel when he was a child — and was left captivated by the misunderstood monster.
“I immediately knew the creature was me,” he told Page Six exclusively at the 2025 Gotham Awards of when he first read the book at age 11.
The critically acclaimed director explained that he related to the creature’s alienation from society.
“I didn’t fit [into] what people thought I should be as a boy growing up in the 60s,” he said.
Del Toro insisted that despite becoming an Oscar-winning artist, he still feels like that alienated 11-year-old boy who related to the monster.
“It’s about the inner signals aligning with the mainstream or not,” he explained. “With what people think is proper or not. Or, what people think it should be or what you think it should be.”
The 1818 Gothic classic by Mary Shelley is about a young scientist named Victor Frankenstein, who assembles a creature from various body parts.
Del Toro’s version stars Oscar Issac as the doctor and Jacob Elordi as the Creature, with Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz in supporting roles.
He says that he understands the novel’s enduring appeal, as the tale that has been retold many times.
“I think there are maybe ten stories from the vocabulary of myth collectively… and that’s one of them,” he shared.
“Pinocchio’s another, Sherlock Holmes… the literature of the world has given us many of these and every time you sing it with truth and power in your voice and conviction, they are renewed.”
Earlier in the evening, Del Toro picked up a Gotham Award and said that he understood his place in the world after reading “Frankenstein.”
“I understood that back then, through her work and the first glimpse of Boris Karloff, that I did not belong in the world the way my parents, the way the world expected me to fit,” he said in his speech.
“That my place was in a faraway land inhabited only by monsters and misfits,” the director continued. “They have been my kin ever since.”
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