Vincent D'Onofrio

Biography

Vincent D'Onofrio (born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1959) is an American actor and producer known for both film and television work. He is associated with intense characters, often physically striking ones, and he became one of the most recognizable faces in American film from the late 1980s onward. Since 2015 he has also played Wilson Fisk, known as Kingpin, in Marvel's television series.

Raised in Bensonhurst, an Italian-American neighborhood of Brooklyn, D'Onofrio moved often during his youth and spent time in Hawaii, Florida and Colorado. After around eighteen months at the University of Colorado in Boulder, he left to pursue acting and trained at the American Stanislavsky Theatre in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1984 in Open Admissions, while supporting himself with jobs such as security work at the Hard Rock Cafe.

His breakthrough came in 1987 with two very different films. In Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket he played Private Leonard Lawrence, a role for which he gained roughly 31 kilos. In Chris Columbus's Adventures in Babysitting he appeared in only one scene near the end, but his muscular build and long blond hair made a lasting impression. Afterwards he moved between genres, playing Orson Welles in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, the farmer Edgar in Men in Black, the killer Carl Stargher in The Cell, and an aspiring screenwriter in Robert Altman's The Player.

He has also built a substantial television career. He received an Emmy nomination in 1997 for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, and from 2001 to 2011 he played Detective Robert Goren in Law & Order: Criminal Intent, his longest-running role. As a producer he worked on The Whole Wide World and Guy, and in 2005 he directed the short Five Minutes, Mr. Welles. He made his feature directing debut with the western The Kid in 2019.

His portrayal of Kingpin, which began in Daredevil in 2015 and continued through Hawkeye, Echo and Daredevil: Born Again, has brought him a new level of public recognition. His career is best understood through its range: he has moved between comedy, drama and genre films, and he is often cited as a character actor whose supporting work carries a film.

Key films

• Full Metal Jacket (1987): Private Leonard Lawrence, the role that established him as a serious performer.
• Adventures in Babysitting (1987): a brief appearance that became memorable for his look.
• Ed Wood (1994): plays Orson Welles in Tim Burton's biopic of the director.
• Men in Black (1997): the farmer Edgar, who is possessed by an alien.
• Jurassic World (2015): Vic Hoskins, one of the film's antagonists.