D’Onofrio talks Kubrick in Actors Dialogue

HudsonValley.com

By Lindsay Suchow | Published: September 25, 2011

Vincent D’Onofrio’s initial conversation with Stanley Kubrick was unconventional, to say the least. He shared the story of his first encounter with the legendary director at Sunday morning’s WFF Actors Dialogue panel at Utopia Studios.

Photo by Danika Atkins

D’Onofrio, who got his big-screen break as the unstable, overweight Pvt. Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence in Kubrick’s iconic Vietnam War film “Full Metal Jacket,” heard about the role after running into his friend Matthew Modine in New York City. Modine, who played Pvt. J.T. “Joker” Davis in the film, told D’Onofrio there was a character whose role had yet to be filled and that D’Onofrio should give it a shot.

D’Onofrio, standing on a stoop on 10th Avenue in Manhattan, recorded himself reciting a monologue from the play he was acting in at that time (no easy feat back in those days, D’Onofrio noted, as it required renting an expensive camera and various heavy equipment) and sent it in. He got a phone call a few weeks later from a man claiming to be Kubrick.

“I said, ‘Go (expletive) yourself,” D’Onofrio said, and he hung up on him. Later that night, Kubrick called back, and assured D’Onofrio he wasn’t joking. He then sent him a page of dialogue — “with no punctuation … in all capital letters” — and asked him to record it and send it back to him.

“I just put it on tape … and I got hired a few weeks later,” said D’Onofrio. He then spent the next four months in London gaining 80 lbs. for the role.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Kubrick, D’Onofrio said, is “that he was nutty. He wasn’t at all. He’d remind you of most artists you know here in Woodstock.”

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