Law and Order's third version shows D'Onofrio's evolution
By: David Mason
November 30, 2001
Suburban Chicago News
He's Sherlock Holmes with a twist.
Vincent D'Onofrio plays Detective Bobby Goren on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, which is arguably the most interesting of the three Law & Order series. It gets into the mind of the criminal, and Goren is a maverick who won't hesitate to use acting or other techniques to get a suspect to talk.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent airs at 8 p.m. Sundays on NBC.
D'Onofrio is a busy, longtime movie star. He played an unstable Vietnam War recruit in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, Abbie Hoffman in Steal This Movie, a young Orson Welles in Ed Wood and an alien villain in Men in Black. His movies also have included Mystic Pizza, JFK and Adventures in Babysitting. He plays an Irish priest opposite Jodie Foster in the The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, one of several upcoming movies in which he stars. The others include The Salton Sea with Val Kilmer, the thriller Impostor with Gary Sinise and Happy Accidents with Marisa Tomei.
That variety of characters has given D'Onofrio practice in shaping unforgettable people, and that serves him well on Criminal Intent.
"People have been asking me for a couple years to do television," D'Onofrio said during a teleconference with reporters. "I've always been afraid of television. It gets awfully soapy at times. Most of them (shows) are unrealistic and soapy."
But D'Onofrio knew that Dick Wolf, executive producer and creator of the three Law & Order series, focuses on straightforward crime stories, not on who's sleeping with whom.
Viewers will learn more about Goren, who differs from his by-the-book partner, Detective Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe).
The contrast works well, and Eames shows she, too, can fool the crooks.
There's also a great variety to the plots of the Law & Order spinoff. The villains run the gamut from an art forger to an attorney killing all his lovers.
All those crooks are less colorful than the maverick Goren. Future episodes will delve deeper into the detective's background, D'Onofrio said.
"He has a history of schizophrenia with his family," D'Onofrio said. "You'll never meet his mom, but you'll learn about the type of man he is by how he reacts to things.
"He was an Army CDI (intelligence) agent," D'Onofrio said. "He didn't know what else to do, so he became a cop. We're trying to allow him to be knowledgeable about a lot of things. He's the academic type.
"The detective is not always going to catch the bad guy. I'm not always one step ahead," D'Onofrio said. "The psychology of the show is the key to keeping its intensity."
D'Onofrio said he has found an advantage of TV over movies: he can allow his character to slowly evolve.
Before Criminal Intent, D'Onofrio had guest-starring roles on shows such as Homicide: Life on the Street, in which he played opposite Emmy-winning star Andre Braugher.
"I knew I was in the best company," D'Onofrio said.
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