“Locked off my knees and ankles”: Unbelievable Trick Vincent D’Onofrio Used in His Most Hilarious ‘Men in Black’ Scene Shows His Insane Dedication to the Role
- Vincent D'Onofrio is most famous for his role as Kingpin in Daredevil, but he has played more complex characters.
- Men in Black director let D'Onofrio figure out his character on his own after hearing how Stanley Kubrick's trick worked.
- D'Onofrio gave his all to his character of Edgar the Bug for whose leg movements he used props one cannot even imagine.
Most people would recognize Vincent D’Onofrio as the actor who portrays Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin in the beloved Daredevil series. However, what many might not know is that he has played one of the toughest roles ever in the sci-fi action comedy Men in Black, which was a blockbuster success.
While Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith starred as the buddy cops, responsible for policing extraterrestrials, D’Onofrio played the role of the intergalactic bug that was stuck in the body of a farmer. The character is as intriguing as it sounds, but what is surprising is that the actor did most of it on his own.
D’Onofrio had the creative freedom to make the character how he wanted so he gave it his all. He was so dedicated to playing the character that he went as far as using some extreme tricks on his body parts to ensure the authenticity of the character.
Vincent D’Onfrio Had Creative Freedom with His Men in Black Character
Vincent D’Onofrio appeared in several stage plays early on in his career and made his Broadway debut in 1984. Two years later, he played the role of the overweight clumsy marine recruit Pvt. Leonard Lawrence in the war movie Full Metal Jacket, directed and written by Stanley Kubrick.
Working with Kubrick is no small feat and D’Onofrio achieved it despite not being a celebrated name in the industry at the time. In an interview with Vulture, Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld claimed that he asked the actor how Kubrick directed him for Full Metal Jacket. The answer was surprising as Kubrick has let D’Onofrio figure out his character’s mannerisms on his own and the movie turned out great.
Sonnenfeld also made that same gamble and only let D’Onofrio know who his character was in Men in Black. It was the actor’s responsibility to structure the character in a way that would fit well. The only direction was to be “flat” as in not too distracting.
Vincent D’Onofrio on How He Structured the Character of Edgar the Bug
D’Onofrio’s Edgar, the farmer’s body is used as a suit by an intergalactic humongous bug. So, the actor is more the bug and less the farmer who was berating his wife when the bug in question landed in his yard. The bug sucked out Edgar’s internal body parts and put his skin on like a suit.
The physical features of the character, as well as the way his body movements, were far from human. He had a stiffness to his walk and his facial expressions were very distinct. Part of it was prosthetics and the rest was the Mystic Pizza actor’s doing. He told Vulture:
If that thing was really supposed to be folded up inside me, it’d be a pretty difficult to get around. So I had my legs locked off, which was my own concoction. I went out and bought two basketball knee braces and locked off my knees and ankles so they couldn’t move up or down or to the side.
One can only imagine what must that have been like. He used those props for the first week of the film’s shooting to get used to the way he would be performing in the movie. He also made parts of his body act involuntarily so that it actually looked like there was something wrong with this body walking through the streets of New York City.
Men in Black is available for buying and renting on Apple TV.
