Benicio del Toro had a tense encounter with TSA for an unexpected — but quite understandable — cause.
The actor was on his way from Boston to Los Angeles when he was asked by airport security to search the contents of his carry-on, he revealed to Late Night presenter Seth Meyers on Wednesday, June 4.
He packed the screenplay for his new feature, Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, in extra-large type for easier reading. “The opening scene is [called] ‘Interior Airplane: Bomb,'” del Toro says to a loud chuckle from the audience, but it gets worse. “The second scene is ‘Interior Cockpit: Eject the Pilot,’ and the third scene is ‘Crash.'”
The celebrity informed the TSA official that it was a screenplay script, but this did not satisfy the employee, who stuck up a finger and told him to wait before leaving.
“Five TSA guys come over, and they hover around the script, and they’re looking at it and looking at it,” he tells me. “And then finally the supervisor showed up, and he walked in, and he looked at me, and I think he recognized me maybe from Sicario or Traffic, and he just sat there and looked at it, and they let me go.”
Del Toro expressed admiration for the TSA agent who stopped him, despite the slight inconvenience caused by the holdup. “I give that guy a thumbs-up because he was paying attention.”
“You have to give that guy credit because, let’s say he let you go and something terrible happened,” adds Meyers, who acts out the scenario: “He told me it was a movie!… And you believed him?!”
“It was a checklist!” del Toro concludes the scene.
In The Phoenician Scheme, del Toro plays Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda, a rich businessman with a history of aviation disasters.
Del Toro is far from the first celebrity to encounter an airport security mistake. Hugh Grant recently described a less lighthearted encounter.
In April, the actor chastised an immigration officer at London’s Heathrow Airport for reportedly being “intrusive, insulting, and creepy” during an interaction with his children.
In a post on X, Grant claimed that an official asked his children if he and his wife, Anna Eberstein, were parents.
“Just came through Heathrow with wife and children,” Grant said in his post. “We all share the same last name (Grant) on our passports. The immigration officer engages my children in conversation before whispering to them, ‘Are these your mom and dad’?” Intrusive, insulting, and creepy.”
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Grant has a daughter, Tabitha Xiao, 13, and a son, Felix Chang, 11, with actress Tinglan Hong. He also has a 12-year-old son, John Mungo, and two daughters, Lulu Danger, 9, and Blue, 6, with Eberstein, 46.
Channing Tatum claimed in an August 2024 interview that he is frequently delayed, not because of a suspected breach, but because one of his famous movie quotations is repeated to him “every single time” he passes through security: “My name is Jeff.”
“It’s strange what occurs in pop culture like that.” It’s such a small moment in the film,” he comments about the 2014 comedy 22 Jump Street. “I remember doing a table read, and it wasn’t even amusing. It was just anything. “All of a sudden, man.”
@etalkctv Winona Ryder tells us she has missed flights because TSA wouldn’t let her through until she said “Beetlejuice” three times. 😮✈️ Watch more of @Tyrone Edwards’ chat with the cast of ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ in Etalk’s 30-minute special Sept 3 at 7pET on @ctv 💚🖤 #WinonaRyder #Beetlejuice #Beetlejuice2 #BeetlejuiceBeetlejuice #MichaelKeaton #JennaOrtega #CatherineOHara #interview #TSA @Warner Bros. Movies @Warner Bros Pictures ♬ original sound – etalk
Similarly, Winona Ryder stated that she receives a recurring request at TSA to recite “Beetlejuice” three times, as her character did in the classic film and its latest reboot.
“I have missed flights because the TSA people wouldn’t let me through unless I said it three times,” Ryder said in August.