The Courier-Mail

THE GUIDE

A man of many parts

Jennifer Dudley

16 Oct 03

SOME call him "the human chameleon". His father calls him a Hollywood hired gun who

plays characters others cannot. Whatever his nickname, Vincent D'Onofrio has certainly earned himself a reputation as an acting enigma.

It began with his feature-film debut in Stanley Kubrick's gritty Vietnam War film Full Metal

Jacket which D'Onofrio clearly took seriously. The customarily lean actor gained more than

30kg to play the role of unstable recruit Private Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence, making

Renee Zellweger's 10kg growth for Bridget Jones's Diary look slender by comparison. In addition to this record-breaking weight gain, D'Onofrio's menacing performance had many tipping him as

either the next big thing or the next big psychopath.

Following this success, D'Onofrio seemed to toy with the idea of joining the movie big league. But after his next roles in the mainstream films Adventures in Babysitting with Elisabeth Shue and the Julia Roberts vehicle Mystic Pizza, he thought better of it.

D'Onofrio decided to create a more "eclectic" acting career, choosing projects based on their story rather than their budget and parts on their merits rather than their billing. He eschewed fame, preferring the life of a character actor to that of a $40 million man.

For this reason, D'Onofrio has starred in only a smattering of well-known films (JFK, Men In Black and The Cell among them) though he has appeared in more than 50 movies. So it must have come as a surprise to many when the reluctant star accepted the lead role in one of television's best known franchises, Law & Order.

In typical style, D'Onofrio, 44, has a lofty explanation for his seemingly out-ofcharacter decision. "I think (what swayed me) was the idea of being able to do a television series and still do a film – that I would have a hiatus and do a film a year and I would not be able to do so many films," he says. "I was doing too many films so I could support my family and I wasn't spending enough time thinking about the sorts of films I was making."

D'Onofrio made the transfer to television after an approach by Law & Order creator Dick Wolf and the man who developed its Criminal Intent offshoot, producer Rene Balcer.

"Dick Wolf came to me and he has all these shows on TV, but it wasn't that that swayed me," he says. "He gave me a really good pitch of a really good concept – a contemporary Sherlock Homes-type show with no soap."

Though D'Onofrio's interest in the series belied his wont to play a host of varied roles, he was not about to give up his other acting demands.

"We talked about a lot of things and agreed about the ways we would approach the show and what would make me happy as an actor," he says. "It involved concentrating a lot on performance, not just the story. I just wanted it to be clear that I was going to create a full character and, although the show is story-driven, that it would feature a lot of characterisation."

The result is a show that mainly focuses on D'Onofrio's character. Detective Robert Goren is an unpredictable blend of obsessive policeman, cunning tactician and wacky performer. Partnered by strait-laced and stylish Detective Alex Eames (Kathryn Erbe) in the Major Case Squad, Goren uses psychological games to uncover his subject's guilt.

Playing up the psychological aspects of his character is not hard for D'Onofrio, who admits to owning "a library of encyclopedias on the insane" used to research previous roles.

"I really didn't have to do a lot of research because I'd played so many criminals and a few cops before and I've gone through cop training in a few different states," he says. "The writers are also pretty well-versed in that kind of psychology when it comes to killers and crime so we talk about a lot of the stuff and I have total freedom to take it off the page."

But D'Onofrio is also interested in the mind games Law & Order: Criminal Intent plays with its viewers. What sets the show apart from parent show Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is its focus on the criminal.

Unlike its contemporaries, Criminal Intent shows the bad guys perpetrating crimes, giving the audience a lead over the detectives. The interesting part, D'Onofrio says, is when his character catches up with the audience and they learn he knows things they do not. This is, of course, interspersed with snippets of his character's vast knowledge.

"There are some great Sherlock Holmes moments," he says with a degree of glee in his voice. "Out of the blue he'll know about this or that and he'll quote things out of certain classic books."

Occasionally, D'Onofrio will stretch his character's knowledge even further. In one episode he spoke fluent German and he promises "other languages very soon".

D'Onofrio says the surprises will keep coming. "I approach each episode as a story in itself and try to make it as entertaining and quirky as I possibly can and with as much heart as I possibly can," he says. "I don't want it to suddenly turn into something you're going to expect. I never want to think we've figured this character out because if we start doing that we're dead in the water."

But his obsessive, book-smart character doesn't always get his man or woman. D'Onofrio says he was pleased writers introduced a Moriarty for his Sherlock Holmes character to challenge his thinking.

His arch-nemesis is played by Olivia d'Abo (The Wonder Years, Wayne's World 2) and appears in more than one episode.

"I don't catch her and there's other aspects of not accomplishing what I want to accomplish that causes havoc because I was too involved in my obsessiveness," he says.

D'Onofrio clearly still delights in his role as an imperfect crimefighter and though he admits it is "a little strange" to keep returning to the same character, he is still enjoying playing cops and robbers on the small screen.

It also gives the Brooklyn-born actor more time to spend with his family – wife, Carin van der Donk, and their toddler son Elias – and allows for the occasional visit to Australia to see his daughter with former wife Greta Scacchi.

He hopes audiences give him the chance to continue to further explore his oddball detective creation. "I think that when people watch this show they have to take a leap of faith with us," he says. "We do depend on refrigerator logic, where you go to the refrigerator later and think 'wait a minute, that didn't make sense', but I can promise that I'm going to deliver the most interesting stuff I can in each episode."