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Vincent D'Onofrio: Dwelling in The Cell

Since bursting on to the scene as the tortured Private Gomer Pyle in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (the same year he played a vision of Thor in Adventures in Babysitting), Vincent D'Onofrio has built himself a résumé that tends toward the edgy, the aggressive, and the unusual.

D'Onofrio has played roles that range from the romantic (Mystic Pizza) to the scruffy (The Player). Though he hasn't shied away from bigbudget Hollywood films (including Strange Days and Men in Black as well as The Cell), D'Onofrio has also assembled a filmography of challenging, unconventional independent movies.

In the process, he's played film giant Orson Welles (in Ed Wood), a computer-generated weasel with a bad comb-over (in The Thirteenth Floor), and writer Robert E Howard (in The Whole Wide World).

More recently, he played a serial killer opposite Jennifer Lopez in The Cell, and Abbie Hoffman in Steal This Movie!, a film biography of the late political activist that D'Onofrio helped produce. Amazon.co.uk recently spoke to him in New York.

Amazon.co.uk: You play a serial killer in The Cell. How did you get involved in the film?

Vincent D'Onofrio: It was the director, Tarsem, who talked me into it. I was reluctant to do a part like that. There have been quite a few films made about serial killers and a couple of them were done well, like The Silence of the Lambs. So I wasn't sure I needed to be in another one. But Tarsem is such an amazing man to talk to. From the ideas he explained, it was pretty clear he was going to do something that hadn't been seen before. And with the cast-- Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn--it seemed like it would not be cheesy.

Amazon.co.uk: Why were you down on the idea of a movie about a serial killer?

D'Onofrio: We're all pretty clear that there are serial killers out there. And we're pretty clear about why they do what they do. So I wasn't sure we needed to explore that. I was a little reluctant that a movie like this needed to be made. On the other hand, I've seen people be entertained by this film. And entertaining people is what I do. So I guess it's OK then.

Amazon.co.uk: You also play the late political activist Abbie Hoffman in Steal This Movie! Did you know much about him before you started?

D'Onofrio: No. I remembered his name but not what he looked like. I had vague memories of his voice, because he used it a lot. The more I learned about him, though, the more intrigued I was.

Amazon.co.uk: What was the most interesting thing you learned about him?

D'Onofrio: I think it was the idea that he almost didn't realise how much of a following he did have, or what he wanted to be, until it was all over and he had to go underground. He was so involved in what he was doing, so wrapped up, that he didn't clearly understand what made him do it until he was mourning it when he went underground.

Amazon.co.uk: Why did you start acting?

D'Onofrio: I realised at one point that I had a knack for it and that I didn't mind doing the homework. Plus I had no stage fright. I have a lot of confidence. There's something about my own person that makes me numb to being self-conscious or worried about what people think while I'm performing. Sometimes it feels like confidence, other times like disinterest.

Amazon.co.uk: Do you read reviews?

D'Onofrio: Sure. In fact, if somebody tells me about a bad review, I read it--and save it. Sometimes I even carry them around.

Amazon.co.uk: You didn't get bad reviews for your role on a memorable episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, which also happened to be the subject of a documentary about the making of that TV series.

D'Onofrio: No, I got nothing but praise for that. Lots of good reviews. I didn't keep any of those. But my friends and even people on the street were very positive about that show. It's always nice to hear what real people think. But that's changing.

Amazon.co.uk: How?

D'Onofrio: Because of all the entertainment channels on TV and the magazines, everybody today knows so much about what I do. They're all becoming like critics: they know the right wording, the right phrases. So it's different now to talk to people on the street because everybody knows how movies are made. They're very articulate about filmmaking and performance.