Siblings: Elizabeth D'Onofrio, Antoinette D'Onofrio, Guy Meyer, Connie Meyer
Mini Bio (1)
Vincent D'Onofrio is known as an "actor's actor". The wide
variety of roles he has played and the quality of his work have earned
him a reputation as a versatile talent.
Vincent was born in
Brooklyn, New York, to Phyllis, a restaurant manager and waitress, and
Gene D'Onofrio, a theater production assistant and interior designer. He
is of Italian descent. He studied at the Actors Studio and the American
Stanislavski Theatre. His debut on stage was in 1984 in the Broadway
play "Open Admissions", followed by work in numerous other stage plays.
As a film actor, D'Onofrio's career break came when he played a mentally
unbalanced recruit in
Full Metal Jacket (1987), directed by the renowned
Stanley Kubrick. For this role D'Onofrio gained nearly 70 pounds. He had a major role in
Dying Young (1991), and appeared prominently in the box-office smash
Men in Black (1997) as the bad guy (Edgar "The Bug").
Other films of note in which he has appeared are
Mystic Pizza (1988),
JFK (1991),
The Player (1992),
Ed Wood (1994),
The Cell (2000) and
The Break-Up (2006). In 1996 D'Onofrio garnered critical acclaim along with co-star
Renée Zellweger for
The Whole Wide World (1996), which he helped produce. He also made a guest appearance in the TV series
Homicide: Life on the Street
(1993) in a 1997 episode, where he played an accident victim who could
not be rescued and was destined to die. For this performance he won an
Emmy nomination. In 2000 he both produced and starred in
Steal This Movie (2000), a biopic of radical leader
Abbie Hoffman.
In
2001 D'Onofrio took the role which has likely given him his greatest
public recognition: Det. Robert Goren, the lead character in the TV
series
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
(2001). Goren is based on Sherlock Holmes but, instead of relying upon
physical evidence like Holmes, D'Onofrio's character focuses on
psychology to identify the perpetrators, whom he often draws into
confessing or yielding condemning evidence.
In his career
D'Onofrio's various film characters have included a priest, a bisexual
former porn star, a hijacker, a serial killer,
Orson Welles,
a space alien, a 1960s radical leader, a pulp fiction writer, an
ingenious police investigator and Stuart Smalley's dope-head brother.
His on-screen love interests have included
Julia Roberts,
Cameron Diaz,
Renée Zellweger,
Marisa Tomei,
Tracey Ullman,
Rebecca De Mornay and
Lili Taylor.
- IMDb Mini Biography By:
Roger Burns <rogerburns@att.net>
Spouse (1)
| Carin van der Donk |
(22 March 1997 -
present) (2 children) |
Trade Mark (1)
Towering height and rotund frame
Trivia (19)
Played the character of "Bill Newman" in both
JFK (1991) and
Malcolm X (1992).
Last name is pronounced Don-off-ree-o.
Daughter: Leila George, born March 20, 1992. Her mother is actress
Greta Scacchi.
Son: Elias Gene D'Onofrio, born in December 1999. His mother is Carin van der Donk.
Ironically, he played Moriarty in the TV movie
Sherlock (2002) while he starred as Robert Goren in
Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001), whose character is based on Sherlock Holmes.
Son: Luka D'Onofrio, born on February 14, 2008.
He is of Italian descent.
Personal Quotes (8)
[on acting] Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you
juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is
always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101.
Then you start putting layers on top of that.
I took a route of acting, rather than starmaking, so it cost me a lot financially.
[on his career choices] It's something that I've been saying for
years when people ask me how I pick the things that I do. I pick the
things that scare me the most. You have to like the story first. I'm not
gonna play a part that doesn't instill some kind of fear in me. If I
read a part, and suddenly, I'm thinking halfway through, "I'm not sure I
could get away with this", I think of everything I can think of to keep
me from doing it, that's the one I should do.
I am a method actor, but I'm also a film actor as well as a method
actor. Characters that don't have humility, whether they are heroes or
villains, are hard to relate to. All characters in every aspect of what
we do should have humility. If they don't, then they're a cartoon
character. I know that during actual performance scenes, what I need to
trigger myself off, and I know how to trigger it off so that it will
trigger you off, which will also influence how you feel when I'm
expressionless.
I'm not gonna make excuses for other actors. I'm just talking
about myself. The good actors that I've met - I've met some of the best
actors that we'll ever see - and I know for sure the one thing that we
all have in common when we all look in each other's eyes, is that we're
all struggling to achieve 100%. That's all I see when I see another
artist. All of us are trying to achieve 100% in our work. That's all we
struggle to do. We never do, but we never stop trying until the day we
die. It's that struggle to achieve 100%, that's where our performance
lies, that's what the audience gets. They get the struggle.
[on being a "Method" actor] The thing is, it's the research that
you do that is exhausting. That's what always affects you. When I did
The Cell
(2000)--no matter what you think of that movie, because I have my
opinions of it, too--it was, you know, I still have nightmares from the
research that I did. Not from playing the part, just from the research.
There was stuff that I should have never looked at, that I should have
never gone anywhere near. As a father, I can't imagine going to that
place again. I'm not saying I wouldn't, I'm just saying it was too much.
[on his role in
Ed Wood (1994)] I never was happy with the job I did in "Ed Wood". Even though [
Tim Burton]
was, I wasn't. Because it's not what I wanted, it's not what I wanted.
First of all, the company, for whatever reason, not Tim, but the company
took a very long time to hire me and I was busy doing another project. I
eventually only ended up with three weeks to prepare for it and that
bothered me. But, you know, I had to be brave and I had to do it the
best I could. It was too much of a caricature. I didn't like it. It was
too surface of a performance.
[on playing real-life characters] There's a lot of shame that goes
on when you're playing someone who has really lived and has passed.
You're struggling with it all the time. I am, anyway. When I played
Robert Howard in
The Whole Wide World
(1996), I was struggling with it. There's this dual thing where you
feel real good about being able to play this juicy part, and then
there's constant shame: "Who am I to pretend to know who this guy was?
Who am I to represent this guy for people who never knew him?" The
pressure is unbelievable, I can't tell you.
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