Vincent D'Onofrio

Imposing, intense and eccentric, this burly, stage-trained chameleon made an auspicious feature debut as an unstable Marine recruit in 1987's Vietnam War epic Full Metal Jacket, a role for which he transformed himself by shaving his head and gaining 70 pounds. Later that year, he was unrecognizable as a buff, blond garage owner in Adventures in Babysitting. Not traditionally good-looking but magnetic and malleable, D'Onofrio quickly became an in-demand character actor. Due to his physique, he often played villains in A-list pictures (a serial killer in The Cell, an evil alien in Men in Black), while indies (many produced by the actor himself) allowed him to show off his range. He was brilliant as the sexually obsessed creator of Conan in The Whole Wide World and charismatic as late yippie activist Abbie Hoffman in Steal This Movie. While he routinely garnered praise, he was ignored by mainstream awards and snubbed by director Tim Burton, who disliked D'Onofrio's impersonation of Orson Welles in Ed Wood so much that he had Pinky and the Brain's Maurice LaMarche dub over his voice. (D'Onofrio got another shot at playing that cinematic legend, in the 2005 short film Five Minutes, Mr. Welles, which he also directed and produced.) Although he had spent most of his career on the big screen, an Emmy-nominated guest appearance as a doomed subway rider on Homicide got him thinking about the small screen, and in 2001 he signed on for his first-ever series-regular role as a brilliant if odd detective on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The show was a hit and the part was flashy, but the burden of a weekly show took its toll and after being hospitalized twice for fainting, he was diagnosed with exhaustion. As a result, beginning in 2005, his character Det. Goren and his partner Det. Alexandra Eames (played by Kathryn Erbe) began alternating episodes with another team, this one headed by Law & Order veteran Chris Noth.