Random Vincent D'Onofrio Is Awesome In Everything - Even If You Don't Recognize Him Half Tim (18 items)

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  (#16) The Salton Sea

  • Val Kilmer, Meat Loaf, Danny Trejo, Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Sarsgaard, R. Lee Ermey, Luis Guzmán, Chandra West, Shalom Harlow, B. D. Wong, Shirley Knight, Anthony LaPaglia, Adam Goldberg, Deborah Kara Unger, Doug Hutchison, Glenn Plummer

  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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  (#7) The Cell

  • Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Sarsgaard, Dean Norris, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Dylan Baker, Catherine Sutherland, Musetta Vander, James Gammon, Patrick Bauchau, Jake Weber, Tara Subkoff, Gerry Becker, Jack Conley, John Cothran, Jr., Nicholas Cascone, Lauri Johnson, Kamar de los Reyes, Colton James

  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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  (#3) 'Daredevil' - As A Powerful Yet Anguished Comic Book Supervillain

  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."
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  (#4) 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' - As A Brilliant, Eccentric Criminal Pathologist

  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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  (#18) The Player

  • Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeff Goldblum, John Cusack, Tim Robbins, Gina Gershon, Jeremy Piven, Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Falk, David Alan Grier, Richard E. Grant, Lyle Lovett, Steve Allen, Dean Stockwell, Sydney Pollack, Scott Glenn, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Peter Gallagher, Cynthia Stevenson, Brad Davis, Jayne Meadows, Brion James, Felicia Farr

  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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  (#17) Happy Accidents

  • Marisa Tomei, Anthony Michael Hall, Vincent D'Onofrio, H. Jon Benjamin, Cara Buono, Holland Taylor, Tovah Feldshuh, Tamara Jenkins, Richard Portnow, Mike McGlone, Larry Fessenden, José Zúñiga, Dan Frazer, Nadia Dajani, Stephen Gevedon, Sean Gullette, Lianna Pai, Sanjay Chandani, Bronson Dudley

  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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