He has portrayed everyone from an unhinged private in Stanley Kubrick’s classic “Full Metal Jacket” to an alien bug in “Men in Black” to a Marvel villain in two “Daredevil” series.
You get the idea. Some actors are lucky to have one iconic role. Others, like Vincent D’Onofrio, forge careers that contain multitudes of them
The versatile star of film and television will be in metro Detroit this weekend for the popular Motor City Comic Con. He is scheduled to meet fans on Nov. 15 and 16 and participate Nov. 16 in a panel discussion with “Luke Cage” star Mike Colter about Marvel streaming shows.
D’Onofrio’s appearance is among the highlights of Michigan’s biggest pop-culture convention, which will bring together celebrities, comic artists, cosplay enthusiasts, vendors and fans Nov. 14-16 at Novi’s Suburban Collection Showcase. He spoke to the Free Press about some of his most unforgettable roles (and a surprising one that he’d love to play).
‘Daredevil’ (2015-18) and ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ (2025-present)
In both the Netflix original series and the Disney+ revival, D’Onofrio lends Shakespearean depth to Wilson Fisk, the crime boss known as Kingpin, who is as oddly sympathetic in his search for love and respect as he is terrifyingly violent.
D’Onofrio says he understands why the supervillain was able to evoke a certain empathy in viewers. “To see him in domestic situations … meeting Vanessa, falling in love, getting married, all that stuff. … That was the most interesting (thing) to me about it,” he notes of the Netflix series.
In the first season of “Daredevil: Born Again,” Fisk became the mayor of New York City, a plot twist that will have major developments when the series returns March 4, 2026. “It gets very heavy, that whole situation in the second season,” says D’Onofrio of a journey that “is just getting wilder and wilder and crazier and crazier.”
‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ (2021)
In the biopic starring Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye Bakker, D’Onofrio plays Jerry Falwell, the famous televangelist and conservative activist who co-founded the Moral Majority. He won praise for capturing Falwell’s genial exterior and inner toughness as a political power broker.
“I just tried to nail him. I looked at so much footage and wanted to get his voice down as close as I could and his mannerisms and his whole kind of tone and vibe that he threw out,” says D’Onofrio. “He overcompensated with his voice, because he wasn’t that well-educated. So he overcompenstated in the way that he enunciated and used inflection. … That was fun to do.”
‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent’ (2001-11)
D’Onofrio laughs at the suggestion that devoted followers of his tormented, driven Det. Bobby Goren kept hoping for an episode where he would go on a date and have fun. “He was a pretty intense guy,” he admits.
The tight and “really well-executed scripts” helped make what D’Onofrio calls “a very hard job” easier. As he explains: “We averaged 17 hours a day for 10 months a year. It will always be probably the most difficult job I’ve ever done.” He played Goren from Season 1 through 8, sat out most of Season 9, then returned for the concluding Season 10.
He praises “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf for giving him free rein in interpreting the character. “It was my first big job like that on television. People told me to ‘push yourself away from the table, get through it.’ I didn’t do that,” says D’Onofrio. “If we were going to do a Sherlock Holmes-type show, I wanted it to be interesting.”
‘Men in Black’ (1997)
Here is one serious actor who enjoys playing creatures like Edgar the Bug, a cockroach-like space alien disguised as a human farmer in the Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith action romp. “A lot of people don’t know it’s me doing it,” says D’Onofrio. “But the people who know it’s me always bring it up.”
D’Onofrio likes many genres of film, but admits he loves monster movies — “not particularly horror films, but monster horror, ever since I was a kid (watching) Lon Chaney Jr. and Wolfman and Frankenstein, Dracula and Swamp Thing.”
Speaking of Swamp Thing, he started reading the comic books about the DC antihero when he was in his 30s at someone’s recommendation. “The narrative is amazing,” he says. “He has this inner voice that’s so emotional and so empathetic because he is just brokenhearted.”
Continues D’Onofrio: “When people ask me what would I want to do if I was going to do another superhero villain, Swamp Thing is what I would want to do. I don’t think I’ll get to do it, but I’d love to do it.” Hey, director James Gunn (who announced in 2023 that a Swamp Thing movie is under development) are you listening?
‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ (1997 episode, ‘Subway’)
D’Onofrio was nominated for a guest actor Emmy for playing a subway rider who becomes trapped from the waist up between a Baltimore Metro car and the station platform.
The episode focused on conversations between D’Onofrio’s doomed passenger and Andre Braugher’s “Homicide” character, Det. Frank Pembleton, who grows close to him in their short time together.
”It’s one of my favorite jobs ever,” says D’Onofrio. “Andre was amazing.” He says the actors handled the episode much like a two-man play. “To have Andre there in the role opposite, it was so good,” he remembers, describing the late Braugher as “an incredibly well-prepared actor.”
‘Mystic Pizza’ (1988)
Clockwise from top left: Lili Taylor, Vincent D’Onofrio, Adam Storke, Julia Roberts, Annabeth Gish and William R. Moses in “Mystic Pizza.”
D’Onofrio doesn’t just play tough guys and bad guys. In this early Julia Roberts romantic comedy, he was charmingly bumbling as “this Portuguese fisherman dude” who’s in love with Lili Taylor’s marriage-shy character.
What was it like to be a hunky, Hallmark-worthy boyfriend? ”I did it because I was coming off of ‘Full Metal Jacket,’” he says, referring to the searing Stanley Kubrick drama. “I did ‘Adventures in Babysitting’ first. I was there for a day and we shot, like, one scene and that was it. And I had gotten all the weight off I had gained for ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ so I wanted to do something that was completely different than either of those things.”
Describing “Mystic Pizza” as a great experience, he adds: “A lot of people still watch it and that’s cool.” He says he was familiar with Taylor’s work and was drawn to the project by the fact that all of his scenes would be with her.
“Lili and I worked together again a few months ago. … So (in ‘Mystic Pizza) she played my girlfriend. She’s played my daughter (in the film ‘Household Saints’). And now she’s played the governor of New York to my mayor,” he says of her recurring part in Season 2 of “Daredevil: Born Again.”
‘Full Metal Jacket’ (1987)
According to D’Onofrio, he was virtually a movie newcomer when Kubrick entrusted him with the part of a Marine private nicknamed “Gomer Pyle” who is pushed to the point of a mental breakdown from repeated hazing in boot camp.
“I was there for 13 months doing it. (Kubrick) didn’t give much direction, if any. He would just trust us,” he recalls. As filming approached of a pivotal scene where the private shoots his Marine drill instructor, Kubrick talked to D’Onofrio about it. “The night before, he told me he needed it to be big, like Lon Chaney big,” he says, describing how he went home confident that he understood the assignment.
The next day, the scene was finished in just two takes. As usual, D’Onofrio says, Kubrick didn’t say much afterward. “He asked me … to come and sit next to him in his chair and watch the video.” As they sat, “he just put his hand on my wrist on the second one and said, ‘OK, let’s do the special effect,’” meaning he was ready to move on. “That was his way of saying good job.”
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at [email protected].
Motor City Comic Con
Noon-7 p.m. Nov. 14, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Nov. 15, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Nov. 16
Suburban Collection Showplace
46100 Grand River Ave., Novi
All tickets and wristbands can be purchased online at www.MotorCityComicCon.com. Online sales will end at 8 a.m. each day. After 8 a.m., tickets can be purchased at the box office. For full information on ticket prices and events, go to motorcitycomiccon.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: ‘Daredevil’ star Vincent D’Onofrio is headed to Motor City Comic Con
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
