Very demure D'Onofrio
Actor Vincent D'Onofrio travels to The Thirteenth Floor
By Bob Thompson
May 23, 1999
Toronto Sun
HOLLYWOOD -- It's a bug's life, getting squashed like that.
"Sure is," says Vincent D'Onofrio trying to be diplomatic and even-tempered. And not go buggy in a Four Seasons Hotel room.
D'Onofrio, you see, is getting ribbed about his Men In Black alien bug part. A few years later and he's still getting the bug-guy business. But he's okay with that.
Before the bug thing, it was this: He was the Orson Welles guy in Tim Burton's Ed Wood. And before that, he was the fat and hapless private in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. Yeah, that guy.
Born in Brooklyn, D'Onofrio was raised to respect his parents and not get captivated by the sound of his own voice, or worry about a trivial tease.
As a teenager, that same thick-skinned, street-wise fellow studied at the American Stanislavsky Theatre in New York, then did some off-Broadway plays. Six years later, at age 24, he made a name for himself on Broadway during the 1983 run of Open Admissions, before being hired by Kubrick.
Besides Full Metal Jacket, his highlights include roles in Mystic Pizza, JFK, Dying Young and The Player. He co-starred in Feeling Minnesota and The Newton Boys. And he produced and starred in The Whole Wide World.
But he's not talkative about his professional ways and means.
"I don't like to talk about what I do," he says. "It just sounds so self-indulgent. I just like to act."
Apparently, he does that in a memorable way.
His latest adventure in pretending arrives with the sci-fi murder mystery, The Thirteenth Floor, which opens Friday.
It deals with two scientists who refine virtual reality technology to the point where they create a simulated city as a sort of fantasy resort.
D'Onofrio plays dual characters who become involved in a killing which may, or may not, have occurred in a virtual reality parallel world of 1937 Los Angeles.
Directed by Josef Rusnak, the sci-fi thriller also features Gretchen Mol, Craig Bierko, Dennis Haysbert and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
"I enjoyed doing the two characters," says D'Onofrio. "I rarely get a chance to do something like this. But I don't want to sound contrived. It was not that difficult, because they were non-specific, broad-stroke characters."
Like The Matrix and eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor exploits virtual reality as a dramatic tool and the coming of the millennium as a marketing convenience.
"The movie business loves to latch onto things that make money," says D'Onofrio. "And because of the millennium, people are wondering about the future and how the advancement of technology will affect them.
"In terms of The Thirteenth Floor, I think if there is any social content it warns that you should be careful what you wish for.
"And I guess it addresses the parallel universe theory. But I don't care about that, because I don't think it matters. We are here. Something else is somewhere else."
Obviously, waxing poetic is not D'Onofrio's style, although he comes close to lofty thoughts talking about his portrayal of Yippie radical Abbie Hoffman in the movie Steal This Book, which was filmed in Toronto and is set for release later in the year.
"Every once in a while you get a part that hurts you," he says. "And that one hurt.
"When I was younger, I used to take parts home with me. But when I was younger, I was this angry young actor who took roles home with him. I don't do that now.
"I did with Abbie. He had a rough life and it was a tough part."
D'Onofrio stops himself, refusing to enter the actor self-indulgent zone.
Besides, he admits, he has a more pressing problem to deal with.
D'Onofrio is preparing a tribute to dearly departed Stanley Kubrick for a movie industry gathering, and he's intimidated by the thought of it.
"It should be somebody like Jack Nicholson," he says, "not me."
D'Onofrio agreed to it, because deep down he feels special about the director who believed in the upstart enough to hire him as the central figure in his movie.
"I'd rather be sitting in the audience, but I said yes, because I owe Stanley Kubrick," says D'Onofrio. "Stanley put my career in motion and he put me exactly where I wanted to be."
Kubrick also gave D'Onofrio simple but dramatic advice for an actor.
"He told me that being real is effective, but being interesting is better."