“Making it was horrible”: the movie experience Vincent D’Onofrio wants to delete from history
Given how many legendary directors Vincent D’Onofrio has worked with, it’s a pretty significant achievement for him to burn bridges.
There aren’t many actors who kick-started their careers with as challenging a task as what D’Onofrio went through when he had his breakout role in Stanley Kubrick’s ruthlessly satirical Vietnam War film Full Metal Jacket. In order to realistically portray the overweight Private Gomer Pyle, he had to gain 80 pounds. It was a shocking transformation that shattered previous records, as the most any actor had previously gained for a role was Robert De Niro when he played Jake LaMotta in the Martin Scorsese boxing drama Raging Bull. The difference was that he was already a major star and an Academy Award winner when he was cast; comparatively, D’Onofrio was an unknown.
It wouldn’t be the last time D’Onofrio would take on a challenging part. He famously donned a heavy amount of makeup to play a farmer infected by an alien parasite in the first Men in Black, which featured pioneering effects with prosthetics. He also went through the difficult process of working with Marvel Studios when he signed on to play Wilson Fisk, also known as the supervillain Kingpin, in the series Daredevil. The show’s follow-up, Daredevil: Born Again, went through a significant restructuring process that involved the removal of the original showrunners, who had reportedly wanted to take the show in a much different direction than the original series.
However, the only instance in which the actor has openly complained about his experience making a film was when he agreed to appear in Claire Dolan, a drama directed by Lodge Kerrigan, who although had approached D’Onofrio, even sending him a copy of his previous film Clean, Shaven, the experience of making Claire Dolan ended up being nothing like what the actor expected.
“He sent me the script and told me Katrin Cartlidge had agreed to do it, and I always wanted to work with her, so we did it,” he told the LA Times.
“A horrible experience. Making it was horrible. I didn’t get along with anyone but Katrin, but you know, the guy is a good director. He makes a certain type of film.”
Despite having a negative experience making it, D’Onofrio did not make any degrading comments about Kerrigan or his filmmaking style.
“Claire Dolan is a certain kind of film; not everyone can sit through a film like that,” he claimed, “The guy [Kerrigan] has a definite style and a definite talent. He was good to work for, in the sense that you knew you were working for a guy with a lot of originality and a real sense of cinema, but I really didn’t have much fun doing it.”
Claire Dolan was unfortunately part of an era in which D’Onofrio had been appearing in films that simply didn’t perform as well as expectations suggested, with even The Newton Boys, a Richard Linklater-directed western that co-starred Matthew McConaughey and Ethan Hawke, being a flop.
However, his resurgence on Daredevil actually ended up previewing his talents to the industry and reminding casting agents of what an underappreciated actor he is, and thanks to recent appearances in the Darren Aronofsky crime drama Caught Stealing, the Antoine Fuqua remake of The Magnificent Seven, and the Oscar-winning drama The Eyes of Tammy Faye, it looks like D’Onofrio is finally getting the credit that he deserves.
