Vincent D'Onofrio was born in New York but he is of Italian Descent.  His father is Genarro, a theater production assistant and an interior designer. His mother was a manager and a waitress in a restaurant. Vincent had two older sisters but their parents got a divorce when he was still young and his mother second husband was George Meyer.  He was interested in magic as a young boy and when he was a teenager, he was already helping his father to run sounds and to build the backstage for community theaters.  

Vincent D'Onofrio is known as the actor who is capable to slip in any role and he is said to be the most compelling performer and unpredictable. In the Full Metal Jacket, he played Pvt, Leonard Lawrence who was mentally unstable and overweight Marine recruit.  He had to gain 32kg to be able to play this role and this weight is recorded to be the most weight that a person had gained just for a role. He lost all this weight in 9 months and he had played in the Adventures of Babysitting being a total different person with more muscles. He played in a supporting role of Mystic Pizza. In Ed Wood, he played Orson Welles and in The Velocity of Gary, he played a Bisexual Porn star.

He started his music when he appeared in the comedy as a country singer in Joe Pub known as George Geronimo Gerkie. At first Vincent D'Onofrio, was a boyfriend to Greta Scacchi and they did many films together. They had a daughter together.  He got married to Carin Van Der Donk, a Dutch model and they had a son together.  The couple separated for sometime in 2000 but they reconciled and they got a second son. When asked, Vincent D'Onofrio said that his marriage has no problem and he and his family live in Manhattan. While filming Law & Order: Criminal Intent, he collapsed at stage and few days later at home and he was diagnosed as suffering from Exhaustion. The exhaustion may have been caused by filming the film for 14 days at the same time filming another small film of the name Five Minutes, Wr Welles when he was supposed to rest.

 Vincent D'Onofrio has a net worth of more than 40 million dollars. He got his money from salary of many movies he played such as Crackers, The Cell, The whole Wide World, Household Saints, The player, The Blood of Heroes, Men in Black and Full Metal Jacket. He was nominated for the Emmy awards when he played Homicide movie as John Lange and he got Stockholm International Film Festival award of Best Actor when he played in Thumbsucker as Mike Cobb.