Vincent D'Onofrio Is Awesome In Everything - Even If You Don't Recognize Him Half The Time
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If you watch films on a regular basis, you've undoubtedly seen a bunch of Vincent D'Onofrio movies. But did you always know it was Vincent D'Onofrio you were watching? The actor has had a phenomenally successful career by not only being wildly talented, but also having a chameleon-like quality. Sometimes you immediately recognize him and sometimes you don't. He happily alters his appearance and personality to fit whatever character he's tackling. This rare ability allows him to take on a diverse range of roles in every genre, from heroes to villains. Somehow the guy who played Pvt. Pyle in Full Metal Jacket is the same actor who played the alien in the "Edgar suit" in Men in Black.
D'Onofrio may not have won an Oscar, but everyone always loves what he does on-camera. At the same time, he doesn't limit himself to the big screen. He's made intermittent forays into television, most notably in his starring role on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. No matter the screen size, he consistently surprises audiences with inventive, dedicated performances. No two are alike.
This continually amazing actor's most notable roles reveal what makes him such a special performer. In every case, Vincent D'Onofrio's TV shows and movies showcase the creativity he brings to each project, both in terms of how he appears and how he makes a fictional person come alive.
- Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures
To portray the role of Private Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence, D'Onofrio gained 70 pounds. That weight gain literally transformed him. From there, he proceeded to turn the overweight, occasionally clueless solider into a fully formed character.
In some ways, the actor had to transform himself twice. The physical transformation is one way. The other is in how he convincingly turns Pyle from a food-hoarding goofball into an angry, violent man who executes his hostile drill sergeant and then himself. It's a big personality shift, yet D'Onofrio makes the notion that Pyle has "snapped" as credible as it is haunting.
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Although he's primarily worked in film, D'Onofrio has made occasional forays into television. Most notably, he starred in 141 episodes of the legal drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent, playing Robert Goren, a brilliant investigator who specializes in comprehending the psychology behind criminality. While everyone agrees he's the best at what he does, Goren's personal eccentricities often drive his colleagues bananas.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent gave D'Onofrio a chance to fully develop his character over the course of several years, as opposed to having to do it within the span of a two-hour movie. This allowed him to provide Goren with many layers, exploring his personal demons as well as his family life. The result is a rich, three-dimensional portrait of a complex man.
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It's a testament to how good D'Onofrio is in Netflix's Daredevil series that most people agree the second season - i.e., the one in which he only appears half the time - is the weakest of the three. He plays Wilson Fisk, also known as Kingpin. In Marvel Comics, the character is a major supervillain, a bald man of immense muscle who typically wears a white suit jacket and carries a diamond-tipped cane. The actor replicates that look on the show.
There's a long history of performers chewing the scenery when playing a comic book bad guy, from Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's Batman to Jake Gyllenhaal in Spider-Man: Far From Home. D'Onofrio does something remarkable by making Kingpin a suitably grandiose villain while also making him feel like a guy who could exist in real life. Writing for Grantland, Alex Pappademas accurately praised D'Onofrio's work when he said the actor turns Wilson Fisk into "a fully realized human - a man of wealth and taste who has cultivated elegant manners to hold his rage and sorrow in check."
- Photo: Columbia Pictures
When talking about the massive success of Men in Black, credit is usually given to the hilarious odd-couple chemistry between stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The truth, though, is that D'Onofrio's performance as the villain is just as essential. He plays Edgar the Bug, an extraterrestrial creature who comes to Earth and takes over the body of a farmer.
The actor's performance as the grotesque Edgar is every bit as funny as the Smith/Jones bickering. Rather than letting the makeup and fake teeth do all the work, he creates an entire physicality for the character - dazed expression, crooked mouth, slurred speech, and spastic, lumbering movements. D'Onofrio's work as Edgar proves he has A+ comedic skills, and also demonstrates his total commitment to every role.
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The character Vic Hoskins is a stereotype. He's the security expert in Jurassic World who wants to use Owen Grady's (Chris Pratt) trained dinosaurs as military weapons. That's a villainous motivation seen in countless technology-based movies. Nevertheless, D'Onofrio commits to Vic so fully that we really don't care.
The actor is having fun with the role, which allows him to transcend the cliches. He turns Vic into a shrewd satire of gung-ho Texas military-lovin' types. You don't expect that in a big summer blockbuster, which is precisely what makes his work here so special.
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The 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven gives D'Onofrio a challenging task. His character is the moral center of the story. Jack Horne is a devoutly religious man who joins a posse looking to nab a ruthless industrialist who torched a church - an act that claimed numerous lives. There's a lot of mayhem in the film, but Horne is the guy who's constantly weighing the need to be righteous with the need to prevent the villain from further harming anyone else. D'Onofrio balances those traits perfectly.
His bearded mountain man persona in the film, which renders him borderline unrecognizable, was cleverly described by MTV's Amy Nicholson as a "lumbering beast-man who’s strong enough to tackle a horse but talks with the weak warble of an old man demanding more butterscotch."
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Movies about serial killers were all the rage after Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs and David Fincher's Seven. Truth be told, a lot of them were kind of cheesy, with generic, unrealistic villains. In 2000's The Cell, D'Onofrio plays a maniac with a twisted psychology that feels legit - and he does so within a completely fantastical story.
He portrays Carl Rudolph Stargher, a lunatic with a penchant for drowning his targets. When he falls into a coma, psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) uses a special device to enter his mind and find clues about his latest mark's whereabouts. What she encounters is phantasmagoric, to say the least. D'Onofrio is hidden behind creepy makeup, outlandish costumes, and sometimes even horns on his head. Nevertheless, he potently suggests the dangerous psychopathy that fuels Stargher. He's not just playing a character, he's playing derangement itself.
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D'Onofrio only has a cameo role in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, but he makes a huge impression. He plays Orson Welles, the legendary actor/writer/director who gave the world masterpieces like Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil. In his big scene, Welles offers advice to Johnny Depp's title character, a fellow filmmaker with lots of passion but no actual talent. (It should be noted that voice actor Maurice LaMarche dubbed over D'Onofrio's lines.)
The trap when playing a real person - especially one as iconic as Welles - is to merely imitate that person. D'Onofrio shrewdly avoids that pitfall. Aside from looking like the man he's portraying, the actor perfectly captures the mysterious, larger-than-life aura that Welles possessed. That gives his scene with Wood a real punch.
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In 1988's ensemble drama Mystic Pizza, D'onofrio plays Bill Montijo, a working class guy unlucky enough to have his fiancee Jojo (Lili Taylor) get cold feet at the altar. They remain together as a couple, but Bill refuses to sleep with her until she actually follows through on marrying him. Eventually, he breaks up with her, thinking she doesn't really love him.
Mystic Pizza shows the kind of strong chemistry D'Onofrio can generate with an equally gifted co-star. It also once again demonstrates how authentic he can be. The subplot flip-flops gender stereotypes, making the female more sexually insatiable and the male more chaste. It's done to illustrate a point but, handled incorrectly, could have come off as silly. D'Onofrio makes Bill's motivations so crystal clear, though, that we really buy into the dynamic between him and Jojo.
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Detective John Harding has been trying to put away Irish gangster Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson) for years. There's an old saying about how every cop is haunted by that one guy they weren't able to collar. D'Onofrio brings forth that notion in Run All Night.
Even though the movie is Conlon's story, D'Onofrio suggests an entirely different, but connected story - one about a detective determined not to let a bad guy escape his clutches. A potent scene early on finds Harding confronting Conlon in a diner, making very pointed appeals to whatever conscience the guy may have left. The actor is so good at depicting Harding's relentless drive that, at times, you kind of wish the movie would be more about him.
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Adventures in Babysitting was one of D'Onofrio's first film roles. His character is essentially a punchline, or at least it would have been had he not brought something more real to the part. He plays a mechanic named Dawson who, because of his long blonde hair and giant hammer, is mistaken for the comic book character Thor by a little girl.
The gag is that Dawson is a mean guy who abruptly melts when the girl calls him her "hero" and gives him a Thor helmet. It would have been a stupid bit, except that D'Onofrio makes the transition from grump to softy look sincere. And he does it with just a glance and a smile.
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Given that he typically does dramatic roles, it's always fun on those occasions when D'Onofrio flexes his comedic chops. In The Break-Up, he plays Dennis Grobowski, the anxious and neurotic older brother of Vince Vaughn's Gary. Together with third brother Lupus (Cole Hauser), they run a tour guide business and often clash in the process.
Playing a chronic worrier is tough. It's hard to make someone like that funny rather than obnoxious. D'Onofrio pulls it off. In his best scene, he chews out Vaughn's character at work, hitting just the right note of humorous exaggeration and relatable frustration. This is a great "normal guy" performance.
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Strange Days is set on December 31, 1999, and follows the exploits of a former cop named Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) who now peddles a powerful new experience. Using a special device attached to one's skull, a "user" can get the sensation of having another person's experiences. D'Onofrio is Burton Steckler, a maniac cop on the hunt for a special disc that contains incriminating footage.
The actor infuses Steckler with a scary, unhinged quality. We've seen movie "bad cops" before, yet he makes the character's maliciousness so palpable that Strange Days becomes even more tense whenever he comes onscreen. D'Onofrio's work here proves the importance of casting great actors in supporting roles. He improves the film significantly in just a few scenes.
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'Brooklyn's Finest' - As A Small-Time Crook
Photo: Overture FilmsIt takes a really tremendous actor to make an impression in just four minutes of screen time. D'Onofrio plays Bobby "Carlo" Powers, a small-time crook, in Brooklyn's Finest, and his character doesn't survive the opening scene. It finds Powers having a seemingly genial conversation with Detective Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke) inside a parked car. Partway through their talk, Sal unexpectedly shoots him.
Although it's a tiny role, it absolutely requires someone like D'Onofrio, who can, and does, make Powers a charismatic guy. When we see someone so inherently fascinating - and played by a name actor, no less - get popped right off the bat, it's a signal that the story is going to take us to unexpected places. D'Onofrio is critical to Brooklyn's Finest starting off with both a literal and metaphorical bang.
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Rings is a terrible movie. It has a mere 8% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes. However, you won't find a better example of "Vincent D'Onofrio is awesome in literally everything" than this. His small cameo completely enlivens an otherwise moronic, predictable, and thoroughly unscary chiller.
He plays Galen Burke, a blind cemetery caretaker who first provides information to the story's heroine (Matilda Lutz) about Samara (Bonnie Morgan), the supernatural apparition stalking her. At the end, it's revealed that he's actually Samara's father, and he's inadvertently responsible for unleashing her upon the world. The plot is dumb, but D'Onofrio brings so many emotions to his small role - rage, regret, fear - that he singlehandedly elevates the movie whenever he's onscreen. How many actors can bring magic to garbage?
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Happy Accidents is an anomaly in D'Onofrio's career in that he's cast as a romantic lead. His character, Sam Deed, meets and falls in love with Ruby Weaver (Marisa Tomei). The hitch is that he claims to be a time traveler from the year 2470, and she really doesn't believe that.
Making such a kooky premise work requires one very important thing: sincerity. That's exactly what D'Onofrio brings to the role. Roger Ebert noted that the actor "plays the character persuasively and realistically; if a man came back from [2470], he might act something like this." Such sincerity makes the romance engaging, while also showing another facet of D'Onofrio's talent.
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Roger Ebert wrote that Vincent D'Onofrio gives "a great weird demented giggle of a performance" in 2002's The Salton Sea. That's about as accurate a description as you could get. The actor is cast as Holland Dale "Pooh-Bear" Monty, a dealer who lost his nose from too much substance use and now wears an absurd fake one that makes him resemble Winnie the Pooh. He becomes a nemesis to former trumpet player turned "tweaker" Danny Parker (Val Kilmer).
D'Onofrio finds an unusual way to portray an unusual character. Aside from his incredibly odd appearance, Monty has a backwoods Southern drawl that belies the viciousness within his heart. The result is a character that you don't know whether to laugh at or fear - so you do both.
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Robert Altman's The Player is a scathing satire of blockbuster-obsessed Hollywood. It was timely upon its release in 1992, but in retrospect seems eerily prescient of our current cinematic landscape. Tim Robbins plays Griffin Mill, a studio executive receiving threats from a disgruntled writer. D'Onofrio is David Kahane, the prime suspect.
The key to the story is that Mill is all about commerce and Kahane is all about art. D'Onofrio brings that quality out masterfully, turning the character into a believably ticked-off writer who can't stand the fact that smart, ambitious screenplays are rapidly losing value in Hollywood. He nails the righteous anger the character feels, while also suggesting that Kahane's refusal to compromise is as much to blame for his woes as anything his nemesis has done.
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