D’Onofrio’s “Daredevil” (and “Daredevil: Born Again”) co-star Charlie Cox was supposed to appear with him, but he canceled about a week before the event. It didn’t seem to get anyone down. Fans gonna fan: The line was loud with conversations where folks shared their favorite D’Onofrio roles and performances, from the more recent “Daredevil” supervillain Kingpin to the ’80s roles.
The actor came out right on time to a super enthusiastic crowd ready for the conversation to start. The moderator kicked into gear while audience members lined up on two sides of the room for the Q&A.
The “Full Metal Jacket” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” “The Magnificent Seven” and “Men in Black” star jumped right in and was kind, funny and frank as he cracked jokes, told stories and dug into some specifics on acting techniques. Here are some key moments.
Sound props be damned!
The man came to talk and was so comfortable that, with his intimate nature, he immediately made a giant convention center ballroom feel like a living room, so much so that he kept forgetting to talk directly into the microphone. An audience member shouted, “Use the microphone,” so D’Onofrio tasked him with keeping him in check for the rest of the panel, and the exchange turned into a running joke for the duration.Did he actually go to boot camp for his role in ‘Full Metal Jacket?’
Nope. But he did explain some of the prep for that movie. “There was talk about mixing in some real Marines footage, so we had to get salty — like we had to get really, really good, so we did that every day. We jogged in formation, we learned monkey patrol with the rifles, with the spinning and all that stuff. Like, I could put my rifle together, take it apart, put it together blindfolded, but nothing special — we all did that.”‘Are you gonna do that the whole time?’
D’Onofrio is known for making a character his own; that’s part and parcel of his fandom. People are always jazzed to see what he’s gonna come up with. He told two different stories about how the first look at his characters in “The Magnificent Seven” and “Men in Black” garnered the same question from directors Antoine Fuqua and Barry Sonnenfeld, respectively, which was: “Are you gonna do that the whole time?” In each case, while skeptical, they let him roll with it, and the rest is history.What happens when you’re in L.A. on hash?
Well, for D’Onofrio, you’re chilling in Laurel Canyon, smoking out with your friend Steve, you get restless and bored by what’s on TV so you take a walk around the neighborhood, happen upon an orthopedic store and start to think about the physicality of the character, Edgar, you’re about to play in “Men in Black.”On keeping it together
D’Onofrio plays some intense characters, not unlike many actors. When a panel guest asked how he protects his own mental state, he discussed how he’s learned to let work go once he’s outside of that environment.“It’s like a ride. Your body and your brain don’t know you’re acting, so it can pay its toll, but it’s rare that I have to do scenes where I’m at a peak emotional level for 13 hours a day, two days in a row, but it does happen, and it can be exhausting. When I was younger, I used to hang onto the character like actors do because I was afraid that if I released the character, it would be hard to get back into it. Once you’re acting for 40 years, you realize that all that romantic stuff, you can let it go and just do the work,” he laughs. “It’s good to get the tools to do that — to just dump it off. Like, if I came home as Kingpin, my kids would laugh me out of the house. You learn to dump it off and not take it home because it’s not fair to anybody else.”
Humble? Check
Not that we expected anything different; D’Onofrio has never presented as anything other than a New York guy who happens to be an actor. No gross celeb ’tude. His perspective is clear, even with his attention to making his characters easily memorable, or having to work himself into specific emotional states. “Sure, you sometimes have to get to that kind of emotion, but it’s not every day that you have to go in and do that kind of work. Some days it’s really simple, you know? Just to preface everything that I say, it ain’t digging ditches, what I do for a living.”Best Friend? Check
Yep, it’s Ethan Hawke. He referred to Hawke a few times, saying “He’s my best friend,” and later when talking about Hawke during an exchange with an attendee, “Yep, he’s a poet, that kid.”Mentor? Check
When an audience member asked how long he had studied acting and if he still did, he said, “40 years. As long as I’ve been acting, I’ve been studying.” He went on to say that he still has the same mentor “as when I was a kid.” She’s given him a ton of confidence over the years and that he still runs ideas by her, citing part of her value as having an incredible “radar for bullshit.”‘Law & Order: SVU’ or OG ‘L&O’
The moderator put it on the table to the man who spent 10 seasons dazzling folks as detective Bobby Goren on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” D’Onofrio did not hesitate to answer. “I love all those actors and all those shows, but they’re just not as smart as Goren,” he said with a giant smile.‘Are you a Disney prince?’
Since Disney owns Marvel, the moderator closed with a couple of Disney questions before D’Onofrio took a selfie with the crowd. The first asked him to choose between two popular snacks at Disney parks: the churro and Dole Whip. He picked the Whip, adding that his family is split on the matter.And her final ask, “Now that Marvel and Disney are one, do you consider yourself a Disney prince?”
“Prince?” he asked, prepping himself for his answer:
“No. I’m a king.”
