Vincent Philip D'Onofrio (; born June 30, 1959) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his supporting and leading roles in both film and television. He has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
His roles include Private Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence in Full Metal Jacket (1987), Robert E. Howard in The Whole Wide World (1996), Edgar the Bug in Men in Black (1997) and Men in Black: The Series (1997–2001), Carl Stargher in The Cell (2000), New York City Police Detective Robert Goren in Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001–11), and Victor "Vic" Hoskins in Jurassic World (2015). Since 2015, he has portrayed Wilson Fisk / Kingpin in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including in the television series Daredevil (2015–2018) and Daredevil: Born Again (2025–present).
D'Onofrio was born in Brooklyn, New York. He is of Italian descent, with ancestors from Naples. His paternal grandfather was an upholsterer and his maternal grandparents opened the first Italian restaurant in Hawaii. His parents Gennaro "Gene" Joseph D'Onofrio and Phyllis Ann Minicola met and married while Gennaro was stationed in Hawaii with the U.S. Air Force. Gennaro was trained as an interior decorator but spent most of his spare time in amateur theater. Vincent is the youngest of three siblings and the only son. His older sisters are Antoinette (born 1956) and Elizabeth (born 1957), an actress and drama coach residing in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. He was raised in Hawaii and Colorado during his early years.
D'Onofrio's parents divorced when he was young; his mother later married George Meyer, making Vincent a stepbrother to Guy and Connie, Meyer's children from a previous marriage. The family relocated to the Hialeah, Florida area. D'Onofrio has described himself as a shy boy who spent "a lot of time in my room, staying in my head". He later became interested in magic and sleight of hand, learning from Cuban entertainers who owned a small magic shop.
In his teens, he worked backstage in set building and sound production at a number of community theaters run by his father. He graduated from Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High School.
After graduating from high school, D'Onofrio started to appear on stage. During an 18-month stint at the University of Colorado in Boulder, he was involved with small, community-theater productions. He later studied method acting at the American Stanislavsky Theater and the Actors Studio, under coaches Sonia Moore and Sharon Chatten, which landed him his first paid role in Off-Broadway's This Property Is Condemned. He went on to appear in a number of their productions, including Of Mice and Men and Sexual Perversity in Chicago. D'Onofrio continued his career by performing in many New York University student productions while also working as a bouncer at the Hard Rock Cafe, a bodyguard for Robert Plant and Yul Brynner and also worked as a deliveryman.
In 1984, he made his Broadway debut as Nick Rizzoli in Open Admissions. In 1986, D'Onofrio took on the role often considered the defining moment in his acting career, as Pvt. Leonard Lawrence, an overweight, clumsy Marine recruit in the movie Full Metal Jacket. On a tip from friend Matthew Modine, D'Onofrio was urged to send audition tapes to director Stanley Kubrick, in England. Four tapes later, D'Onofrio landed the role. Originally, the character of Pvt. Lawrence had been written as a "skinny ignorant redneck"; however, Kubrick believed the role would have more impact if the character were big and clumsy. D'Onofrio gained 70 lb (32 kg) for the role, bringing his weight to 280 lb (130 kg). While filming an obstacle course scene for the movie, D'Onofrio injured his left knee, compounded by the excessive weight, which required surgical reconstruction.
Over the course of nine months after filming of Full Metal Jacket was completed, D'Onofrio lost nearly all the weight he had gained for his role. He went on to play Dawson, the owner of Dawson's Garage, in Adventures in Babysitting (1987). He appears in one scene near the end of the film. In 1988, he was cast in another supporting role in the film Mystic Pizza, playing the fiancé of Lili Taylor's character. In the film, which was Julia Roberts' breakout film, he was billed under his full name Vincent Philip D'Onofrio. In 1989 he played a supporting role as Young Gar in The Blood of Heroes alongside Joan Chen and Rutger Hauer, for which he is also billed under his full name.
D'Onofrio continued to play a wide variety of minor or supporting roles, including the father of a saint in Nancy Savoca's Household Saints (1993), director Orson Welles in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), farmer Edgar and the evil "Bug" that possesses him from Men in Black (1997), a man who claims to be from the future in Happy Accidents (2000), and the serial killer Carl Stargher, opposite Jennifer Lopez's character in The Cell (2000).
In 1992, he appeared in Robert Altman's The Player, as an aspiring screenwriter.
In 1996, he interpreted pulp writer Robert E. Howard, author of Conan the Barbarian in Dan Ireland's The Whole Wide World (1996) adapted from Novalyne Price Ellis' mémoire One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard, The Final Years. The Whole Wide World was awarded Best New American Film at The Seattle International Film Festival (1996).
For the role of Robert E. Howard D'Onofrio was awarded Best Actor at the 1996 Seattle International Film Festival and Best Actor at the 1998 Lone Star Film & Television Awards.
In 1997, he made a move to television and received an Emmy nomination for his appearance as John Lange in the Homicide: Life on the Street episode "Subway".
D'Onofrio turned down a role in The Sopranos. He portrayed leftist radical Abbie Hoffman in Steal This Movie! in 2000, starring Janeane Garofalo as his wife.
In 2001, he took on what became his longest and perhaps best-known role as Det. Robert Goren on the NBC/USA Network television show Law & Order: Criminal Intent. On March 1, 2008, D'Onofrio made a cameo appearance in a presidential election-related sketch in a Saturday Night Live episode as his character Det. Robert Goren. In the sketch, he interrogates Hillary Clinton (played by Amy Poehler). His entrance to and exit from the skit are punctuated by the Law & Order "dun-DUN" sound.
In 2009, it was announced that D'Onofrio would be leaving Law & Order: Criminal Intent in the spring of 2010, with his last appearance occurring in the two-part, season-9 premiere. He was replaced by Jeff Goldblum, but after a drop in ratings, D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe agreed to return for a 10th (and final) season of the show.
In 2003, it was reported that D'Onofrio and Joe Pantoliano had begun work on a small film titled Little Victories, about a 12-year-old boy whose perceptions of the world are forever changed when his gangster uncle comes to live with him. According to a television interview with Pantoliano, the film was not completed and went into turnaround due to a failure to raise the funds necessary for production.
In November 2005, D'Onofrio won Best Actor at the Stockholm International Film Festival for his role as Mike Cobb in the independent film Thumbsucker. In 2006, he appeared in The Break-Up, starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, playing Vaughn's eccentric brother. Vaughn and he had appeared together in two previous films, The Cell (2000), wherein Vaughn played an FBI agent pursuing D'Onofrio's character, and Thumbsucker (2005). He appears in the Oscar-winning short The New Tenants (2009).