Vincent D’Onofrio

Born on June 30, 1959 in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood dominated by Italian-American families like his, Vincent Phillip D’Onofrio is the youngest son of a theater production assistant and restaurant manager. The family moved several times, so D’Onofrio grew up in places like Hawaii, Florida and Colorado. Finally, his parents ended up divorcing.

After dropping out of college, Vincent D’Onofrio decided he was going to be an actor. He was chosen to become a student of the American Stanislavsky Theatre, in New York. When he left it, he made his first steps on stage in productions of works such as “Of mice and men”.

In cinema he made his debut with the crazy and forgotten comedy The First Turn-On!! where he was one of more among several adolescents who decide to have his first sexual relations. But the role that put him in the crosshairs of moviegoers was the Clumsy Recruit in Stanley Kutrick’s Full Metal Jacket. He was a young man with little cleverness who earned the hatred of his colleagues because the sergeant applies a collective punishment for his mistakes.

Shortly after playing this overweight soldier, he also appeared with an athletic figure in Adventures in the Big City , where his long blond hair is mistaken for the superhero Thor.

Since then, D’Onofrio has returned to demonstrate his talent on multiple occasions. He shot Julia Roberts ‘ Choosing Love , where her character fell in love with her, and Mystic Pizza , where he played the hotheaded newcomer to Lili Taylor ‘s character . He was also a convincing snitch in Oliver Stone ‘s JFK , while Robert Altman made him a screenwriter murdered by a producer fed up with his demands on the grandiose Hollywood Game .

In this last film, he worked with Greta Scacchi , with whom he was dating at that time, and with whom he had also shot the romantic drama Internal Fires , by Gillian Armstrong . The couple had a daughter, Leila George, born on March 20, 1992. But the following year they separated and D’Onofrio ended up marrying model Carin van der Donk in 1997. They both have two other children and although they were separated for a while, they finally reconciled.

D’Onofrio rolls at a good pace. Due to his obvious physical resemblance, Tim Burton turned him into Orson Welles himself , in a brief appearance in Ed Wood , but the gothic filmmaker was not convinced by his performance, and hired another actor, Maurice LaMarche, to dub his voice. . He was also the psychopath in The Cell , and has been secondary in titles such as Strange Days , The Newton Boys , Level 13 , The Dangerous Lives of the Altar Boys , The Salton Sea , Separated or The Masters of Brooklyn .

The general public knows him as the farmer where an alien creature hides in Men in Black . “Sometimes people tell me: you’re the bug, right?” says D’Onofrio. “It happens to me very often.” But he’s proud that he’s managed to stay low-key for the most part. “Being too well-known means death for a character actor. The more famous you are, the less chance you have to do extreme, serious and dramatic roles. Your performances will look stuffy because to people you will be nothing more than a celebrity.”

Vincent D’Onofrio has also worked extensively in the television field. In this area, his role as detective Robert Goren stands out, who he played for 11 years in Law and Order: Criminal Action , until the end of the series in 2011.