Vincent D'Onofrio

Though he established his career in the 1980s and 1990s with numerous film roles, actor Vincent D'Onofrio became a household name thanks to his nine-season run as the intelligent, but imposing Detective Robert Goren on the long-running procedural drama, "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (NBC, 2001-2011). Prior to the acclaim and stardom he received from his television role, D'Onofrio made a quick jump from unknown actor to breakout star as a mentally unstable and put-upon Marine cadet in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" (1987). It would be several years before the young actor was able to have another role of any significance, which came when he played a struggling Hollywood scribe who becomes a homicide victim by the hand of a studio executive in Robert Altman's excellent satire, "The Player" (1992). D'Onofrio settled into a string of leading and supporting turns in smaller movies before showing up as an alien insect in the Will Smith blockbuster "Men in Black" (1997). But it was his nine-year run on "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" that truly propelled his career, a role that he played on one of the most-watched shows on the air at the time. Though in 2010 he left the series to once again focus on features, D'Onofrio had firmly established himself as one of the finest character actors working in Hollywood.