Benicio del Toro treasures his signed copy of David Bowie film The Man Who Fell To Earth

Benicio del Toro says one of his most treasured possessions is a signed laser disc of David Bowie’s 1976 science-fiction film ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’.

Benicio del Toro says a signed copy of David Bowie’s film ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ is one of his most treasured possessions.

The 58-year-old actor is a Bowie super-fan and he was once lucky enough to work with the late rock legend on the 1996 film ‘Basquiat’, which is about the life of American postmodernist/neo expressionist artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Benicio owned the 1976 science-fiction film ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ – which stars Bowie as alien Thomas Jerome Newton who is on a mission to transport water back to his drought-suffering home planet – and had to get his musical hero to add his signature to his copy.

Appearing on the ‘Soundtracking with Edith Bowman’ podcast, he said: “My introduction to Bowie was ‘Let’s Dance’ and on the other album that had ‘Blue Jean’, the follow-up, but I’ve always admired him.

“But I do remember, you know, I had a laser disc of ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’, I love that movie. Well, he did sign the laser disc for me. And I, I really treasure that, you know? It was like, I don’t know, I had this thing of going, like, ‘Hey, you gotta sign this.’ And it was just very gentle.

“I just love that album ‘Live Santa Monica ’72’ and ‘Station to Station’, ‘Low’.

“He had a lot of, like, you know crowd rock with Brian Eno. They had a lot of stuff going on.”

When working on ‘Basquiat’ with Bowie – who played pop artist Andy Warhol in the movie – Benicio admits it was a surreal moment being face-to-face with his idol.

In a previous interview with UPROXX, Benicio – who can be seen in Wes Anderson’s new film ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ – said: “I remember walking into the makeup trailer, and there he was. And he just sat right next to me. He was very normal. Very normal, very polite. I was just like beside myself sitting there looking at myself and going like, ‘Can you believe it?’ Looking at myself in the mirror, I’m sitting right next to David Bowie. But you know, he signed some things for me.”