Vincent Phillip D'Onofrio was born on June 30, 1959, in Brooklyn, New York, to Phyllis, a restaurant manager and server, and Gene D'Onofrio, a theatre production assistant and interior designer. With Italian descent and two older sisters, Vincent studied at the Actors Studio and the American Stanislavski Theatre, earning him a reputation as a versatile talent and an "actor's actor".
His first paid role was in Off-Broadway's "This Property Is Condemned", followed by work in numerous plays, and a stint as a bouncer, bodyguard, and delivery man. D'Onofrio made his Broadway debut in "Open Admissions" in 1984 and continued to appear in stage plays.
In 1987, his career break came when he played a mentally unbalanced recruit in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, gaining nearly 70 pounds for the role. He had a major role in Dying Young (1991) and appeared prominently in the box-office smash Men in Black (1997) as Edgar "The Bug".
Other notable films include Mystic Pizza (1988),JFK (1991),The Player (1992),Ed Wood (1994),The Cell (2000),The Break-Up (2006),and Jurassic World (2015). He received critical acclaim for The Whole Wide World (1996),which he helped produce, and won an Emmy nomination for his guest appearance in The Subway (1997).
In 2000, D'Onofrio produced and starred in Steal This Movie, a biopic of radical leader Abbie Hoffman. From 2001 to 2011, he played the lead character, Det. Robert Goren, in the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a role that has likely given him his greatest public recognition.
Throughout his career, D'Onofrio has played a wide range of characters, including a priest, a bisexual former porn star, a hijacker, a serial killer, Orson Welles, a space alien, a 1960s radical leader, a pulp fiction writer, an ingenious police investigator, and Stuart Smalley's dope-head brother. His on-screen love interests have included Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Renée Zellweger, Marisa Tomei, Tracey Ullman, Rebecca De Mornay, and Lili Taylor.
One of his latest roles is in Marvel's Daredevil (2015) as Daredevil's nemesis, Wilson Fisk. D'Onofrio lives in Manhattan with his wife and children.
