I just saw this article again at "VINNIE VIDI VICI" and the same thing occurred to me: what a humble, ordinary man that is blessed with extraordinary talent.
By Luaine Lee
Scripps Howard News Service
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Despite cinema success, D'Onofrio shies away from Hollywood fame
On his sixth birthday, actor Vincent D'Onofrio spent the day hiding under his bed.
"I remember my aunts and uncles and cousins laying on their side talking to me under the bed," he said with a soft chuckle.
He was an introverted kid, too shy to come out in the bright lights for a birthday cake.
He's still reluctant to bask in the limelight, so you won't find D'Onofrio blasting his way across the screen or careening down a speedway.
Yet D'Onofrio is the kind of actor who just keeps mining little veins; as Orson Welles in "Ed Wood," as the evil alien in "Men In Black" and the tragically unstable soldier in "Full Metal Jacket."
But he refuses to be constantly confronted with what he does for a living.
"I can't be reminded I'm in the entertainment business all the time. It freaks me out," he said. "I don't like having a bad attitude about the business, and if I'm in it all the time I start to...It's not like I'm not in the swing of things; at the same time, my life is separate from it."
D'Onofrio will star as a wealthy and devious businessman in "The Championship Season," which has its premiere June 6 on Showtime; in the movie "The Thirteenth Floor," which opens Friday; and in "The Velocity of Gary," which opens in July.
He has spent his life being separate from his vocation. His dad was an interior designer who started theaters whenever he moved to a new town.
"I never considered being on stage," D'Onofrio said. "I was kind of a techie for him-sound, lights, built sets and stuff like that. But I'm sure it influenced me."
After six months of study at the American Stanislavski Theater Company, he toured for 3 1/2 years. When he returned to New York, he ran into fellow thespian Matthew Modine, who told him about a possible role in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket."
There were two problems: no script and no character to play.
With a rented video camera, his best friend shot D'Onofrio performing a monologue on a stoop in New York. The tape was sent to Kubrick in England, who asked for a second.
"So I sent another and didn't hear anything for another two weeks," D'Onofrio said.
"He called again and said, 'I sent some pages. I want you to put those on tape. I got the (script) and it didn't have much punctuation or any character description or anything.' He said, 'Do anything you want.' So I did that. Then I got the job."
And although he seemed locked in to stardom after that, D'Onofrio took another unconventional detour-to Europe, to take some time off, instead of Hollywood, and more high-profile but low-quality roles. When he did come back to acting, he focused on character roles.
Still like that little boy under the bed, D'Onofrio, 39, insists he doesn't want to be a celebrity.
"Say that I could be a star if I wanted to be-what does that mean? I just want to keep acting," he said. "I've been doing this a long time and kind of maintained a kind of position where luckily I'm considered a legitimate actor."
"That's good enough. And that's been going on for many years."
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