Fellow OSer Beth Mann made an interesting comment in my last post about my marathon viewing of Law & Order: Criminal Intent during a stretch of bad pain. She said, “If you're going to go for a Law and Order marathon, try not to make it Criminal Intent. Vincent D'Onofrio has a strange effect on me over time.”
Even though she didn’t get into specifics, I knew exactly what she meant. There is indeed something odd about Vincent D’Onofrio, and I understood her warnings about him on a visceral level.
No one would argue that he’s a talented actor, and I can remember feeling excited when it was first announced that he was joining the Criminal Intent cast, as I’d always been a fan, as far back as his first Hollywood role as the overweight, unbalanced recruit in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, for which he’d gained 70 pounds.
Yet what makes a constant diet of him so troubling, as Beth so keenly observed?
When he first made his appearance as Det. Robert Goren on Law & Order: CI, he was all ticks and twitches, bending this way and that as he interrogated suspects, clearly attempting to carve out a memorable character who was the quirky genius with odd habits and a knack for solving the case.
The ticks bothered me, but as with all new and promising shows, I try to give them a little time to find their stride, and in time, D’Onofrio did seem to tone down the affectations and get more to the heart of the character, especially when the writers began to explore his history with his schizophrenic mother and drug-addled brother.
It wasn’t until close to the end of his tenure with the series, however, that these more human elements entered the show, so for years, we watched him play Goren as the quirky detective guru—attractive and brilliant, but somehow inhuman, and therein lies the rub.
Whenever I’ve seen Vincent D’Onofrio in any television show or film, there is a strange lack of heart, and thus a peculiar hollowness seems to permeate every character. He’s there but he’s not there, and he’s certainly not interacting with his cohorts, who I imagine must find him a challenge to work with. I once heard Antonio Banderas comment that Angelina Jolie was one of the most generous actresses he’d ever worked with, yet I can’t imagine anyone saying this about D’Onofrio.
While he says his lines to perfection, and his characters are keenly observed (he’s been called “an actor’s actor"), it’s as though he’s playing to himself in each and every role; it doesn’t seem to matter whether anyone else is in the room or not. Even when he played the romantic lead with Renee Zellweger in The Whole Wide World, the chemistry just wasn’t there, and this was with a woman he supposedly had a real-life affair with.
Perhaps not coincidentally, his characters are nearly all attractive loners, and Beth is right. A steady diet of these people, be them on TV or in real life, are a danger to those psyches that seek out connection, for while the loner can seem the strong, silent type, very often he’s just too afraid to speak the truth about himself, and cowardice is frustrating indeed. He wants to draw you in for company and amusement, perhaps even adoration, but he doesn’t really want to give anything in return, and he certainly doesn’t want you to get to know him.
When D’Onofrio began to withdraw from Criminal Intent, sharing the lead duties with actor Chris Noth, it was obvious that his stifled soul was beginning to devour him, exemplified by all he began to devour. As the years passed, the sleek movie star slowly turned into a pasty, overweight, tortured version of his former self, which the writers cleverly worked into the script, a development I’d like to think helped him work through some of these demons.
As for myself, I have to question what draws me to these characters, and to people like this in real life, as I’ve become involved with them at my own peril. Early on, I suppose there was the part of me that thought I could save them, until I began to realize that many of them don’t want to be saved. They prefer to remain distant, resting on the laurels of their talent, there for you to admire but never really know, comfortable on their pedestals that are always just a little bit above you.
But if these loners have any soul at all, the artifice just can’t last, and they do end up paying a high price for the costly walls they build around themselves. In D’Onofrio’s case, aside from the loss of his Hollywood luster, he succumbed to what the press said was “exhaustion,” and he slowly had to retreat from the show. I suppose we’ll never know whose idea that was, his or the show’s producers.
I’ve seen it happen to other creative types, too. John McCrea, the lead singer-songwriter of the rock band Cake—who could write killer melodies and clever lyrics galore in the late ‘90s—got so deeply mired in irony that by the time he wanted to be taken seriously as a songwriter, it was too late. Old fans like myself had become weary of the hipper-than-thou stance, to the extent that by the time he’d realized his mistake, we were long gone.
Years ago, a friend handed me a magazine article about D’Onofrio, and I’ll never forget the strange reaction I had to it. There it was…a full feature on him, along with a one-page photograph, and for some reason, it actually felt awkward to hold the piece, as if it was the strangest thing in the world that there would be an article about Vincent D’Onofrio. I just couldn’t imagine him wanting to ever do something like that, and it was as though I could feel the hostility in just holding the paper in my hands.
My drummer friend, Jagoda, was there to witness the moment, and mentioned how he couldn’t stand the guy. Apparently, he had been in a theater house band for an off-Broadway show that D’Onofrio was starring in, and he said it was a completely forgettable endeavor until the last night of the show’s run, when the understudy took over the lead role. Jagoda said that the understudy completely transformed not just the role, but the whole show, bringing a humanity to the character that D’Onofrio had completely missed.
I didn’t bother to read the article, but for some reason, I’m still hooked on the Criminal Intent reruns. The show may be committed to film, but that doesn’t stop me from hoping that maybe something will change, that maybe Det. Goren, and by extension Vincent D’Onofrio, will expose his soul after all.
So close do guys like him keep their cards to the vest that even saying something like that sounds like heresy. Hmmm. I’ll have to think about that one.
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Comments
that D'onofrio just doesn't project at all.
Maybe that explains his affect and behavior. The body can really shut down on a person and make it hard to keep up a personality.
Jasmine Guy had Lupus, which caused problems with her very promising career soon after her hit series, "Different World". I had hopes for her being the first leading lady Oscar for an African American Woman. She could sing, dance, do it all.
Ha! I checked at IMDB, and he has a mystery illness. He fainted twice on the set in 2004 and was hospitalized for "exhaustion". No more about his well publicized indications illness since then.
Hell, it took most of my life to find out what I had.
"He’s there but he’s not there, and he’s certainly not interacting with his cohorts..."
That's a big one. He's such a method actor that he doesn't seem to have genuine interactions with anyone but his own internal voices.
The tough part, of course, is that he's an amazing actor. He's just not always acting well...is that possible? Truthfully, I ultimately blame the director. When directors deal with bigger than life actors like VD, they are often intimidated and defer to him.
He needs a strong-handed director that offers specific guidance or he suffers from, what I like to call, "Al Pacino/Robert DeNiro Syndrome." Those guys just yell now for a living, especially Pacino. They've lost subtlety, and who's going to tell them? But Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon - ah, raw brilliance!
As for VD's character, he has an effin' partner! Of all of the episodes I've seen, he barely acknoledges any complex feelings for her. She's an appendage to him. I mean, he doesn't have to be in love with her...but come on! She's his partner! She must feel quite frustrated acting with the guy. Though they have a bare chemistry that gets them by.
I've heard he suffers from some serious mental illness - bipolar, I think, as Sally mentioned. Well, join the club. Whatever. Warm up and be nice and showcase your big, bad talent!
Great job at analyzing a topic so well - from so many directions. Just a smart piece.
Sally--You could be right about bi-polar disorder, although I can't say I know much about it. But something was going on with him, as evidenced by just how ill he looked by the time he left.
Hawley--Ya know, Criminal Intent is still the one Law and Order show that continues to draw me in, even in reruns, so I know what you mean. So maybe his illness, for me at least, is somehow working for him in rerun-land.
And Beth--when you said this--"He's such a method actor that he doesn't seem to have genuine interactions with anyone but his own internal voices"--that's it! You nailed it! You summed up in one sentence what I tried to say in this whole piece.
Like you, I was always frustrated that there wasn't more chemistry with Erbe. The show seemed to beg for it.
But hey, I'm still a big fan, all that said. If there's a marathon on, rest assured my TV is on.
I watch the show and get a lot of comfort out of his portrayal. Although I am a woman, I know the feeling of 'seeing the end of the horse race' while most people around me are still at the point of watching the horses being loaded into the gates.
What I mean by that is this (and please, don't think I am suffering from grandios illusions or anything :) - in my work life I've encountered so many situations where I saw a solution, an idea, an event, or whatever was being discussed and upon presenting my idea it usually entailed that old saw. First you are laughed at, then you are ignored, and then someone says the same thing two hours or two weeks later and take full credit for it. On top of that, because I am a woman who was often in a roomful of men in meetings, I apparently was a threatening intelligence presence. I never understood or could comprehend that part of it; it took me years to realize what was happening and only because a coworker pointed the obvious out to me.
Like D'Onofrio's character, I didn't seek fame or fortune in my work. I just sought the truth and the solutions. I felt myself as "apart" from coworkers and discounted in many scenarios. It is a thread that has run through most of my life. And now, as I am much older and not working for money, I am content to be by myself and work on projects and research that means something to me and is not subjected to inspection or being demeaned.
It will be interesting in this last season to see if there are references to the fact that Goren learned that his biological father was a serial killer. The scene where he is sitting in his mother's room after she has died and his biological father being put to death at about the same moment. He portrayed a man whose life had totally emptied itself and the thin shell he inhabited was breaking but releasing nothing.
On a side note, D'Onofrio has been very active with the "Meth Cops Project" which is a detox program started for police and other responders who are suffering ill effects for cleaning up meth houses, etc. He's been working on that for some time.
That's what my mom calls watching the show, "watching Vincent." I think I can explain the "exhaustion" as an effect of (strong, borderline) benign narcissism, which I notice now that I pay attention when the show is on..... I avoid TV whenever possible. It just hurts my head. I am unable to watch the actors, only the show. Apparently CI is over now. After reading this article, I'm thankful for it. I'm 34, and actually diagnosed with several serious mental illnesses. I love this article, have subscribed to the feed. I think you've helped me somehow. It's comforting to feel that there are people out there who can find worthwhile things in people like me. It gives me hope.