IF at times it seems Law and Order: Criminal Intent's Detective Bobby Goren is going mad, there is very good reason for it. The actor, whose hand-waving, stammering portrayal of the character has weirded-out the nation, is trying to stay sane.

``If I get bored, then it's death,'' says Vincent D'Onofrio, who has been playing Goren since 2001.

``For me, a character actor, it's a really hard thing to sustain. To stay interested and interesting you have to constantly reinvent and create, put variation upon variation.''

For this rather exhausting method of working, D'Onofrio blames Stanley Kubrick. The legendary director gave him his first film role, one which established the Brooklyn-born actor's career. In doing so, he also set up the actor's very intense, very internal style of acting.

When Kubrick cast D'Onofrio -- without ever having met him -- as the scene-stealing Private Gomer Pyle in his 1987 anti-war classic Full Metal Jacket (being screened on Sunday as part of SBS's Kubrick retrospective), the actor had only ever worked in theatre.

``He cast me in that part and set up my whole career,'' D'Onofrio says. ``I haven't stopped working since. It was glorious -- I mean, what can you say? Incredible. It was also terrifying.''

D'Onofrio has mixed feelings about the role in Criminal Intent.

``I signed up for only 13 epi sodes,'' he says. ``So I have to be careful. It could be a velvet prison, you know.

``At its worst, it's like I'm in golden handcuffs.''

Caption:  Careful: Vincent D'Onofrio.
Illus:  Photo
Section:  GUIDE