Biografia

Gained a world record 70 pounds (30 kilos) for his role in Nascido para Matar (1987).

"I want you to be big -- Lon Chaney big," Stanley Kubrick informed D'Onofrio during the filming of Nascido para Matar (1987).

Daughter: Leila George, born March 20, 1992. Her mother is actress Greta Scacchi.

One of the founders of the River Run Film Festival (Winston-Salem, North Carolina), along with his sister, Elizabeth D'Onofrio, and their father, Gene D'Onofrio.

Despite playing his character's nemesis in Full Metal Jacket (1987) D'Onofrio was in fact very respected in real life by the late R. Lee Ermey who played Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. Ermey said D'Onofrio's performance of Private Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence was the best performance in the entire film.

[on acting] Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.

I took a route of acting, rather than starmaking, so it cost me a lot financially.

[on his career choices] It's something that I've been saying for years when people ask me how I pick the things that I do. I pick the things that scare me the most. You have to like the story first. I'm not gonna play a part that doesn't instill some kind of fear in me. If I read a part, and suddenly, I'm thinking halfway through, "I'm not sure I could get away with this", I think of everything I can think of to keep me from doing it, that's the one I should do.

I am a method actor, but I'm also a film actor as well as a method actor. Characters that don't have humility, whether they are heroes or villains, are hard to relate to. All characters in every aspect of what we do should have humility. If they don't, then they're a cartoon character. I know that during actual performance scenes, what I need to trigger myself off, and I know how to trigger it off so that it will trigger you off, which will also influence how you feel when I'm expressionless.

I'm not gonna make excuses for other actors. I'm just talking about myself. The good actors that I've met - I've met some of the best actors that we'll ever see - and I know for sure the one thing that we all have in common when we all look in each other's eyes, is that we're all struggling to achieve 100%. That's all I see when I see another artist. All of us are trying to achieve 100% in our work. That's all we struggle to do. We never do, but we never stop trying until the day we die. It's that struggle to achieve 100%, that's where our performance lies, that's what the audience gets. They get the struggle.