Jennifer Lopez Felt It Was Better to Stay Away From Vincent D’Onofrio in ‘The Cell’

Jennifer Lopez starred alongside Daredevil star Vincent D’Onofrio for The Cell . Although the two got along well enough, Lopez felt she needed to keep her distance from D’Onofrio for the sake of the movie.

How Jennifer Lopez felt about working with Vincent D’Onofrio

Lopez’s The Cell was a unique take on the 2000 thriller. The Wedding Planner star played a psychiatrist entering the mind of a dangerous killer to uncover his crimes. Lopez was connected to the visually striking project for a long time, even before the feature found its director. However, D’Onofrio was initially very hesitant to play the film’s primary antagonist. It was only after meeting the director, Tarsem Singh, that he was convinced to do the part.

“It was tough,” D’Onofrio once told Salon about the role. “It was something I was reluctant to do because there have been performances about serial killers in the past that have done pretty well. I figured society pretty much knows enough about serial killers by now. But then I met the director, Tarsem Singh, and his vision won me over. Basically, everything in that film is because of him. The actors did their work and brought things to it. But in the end that film is the way it is because of Tarsem.”

But whereas there are instances of co-stars bonding on set, Lopez and D’Onofrio chose to keep their distance from each other. Which might’ve only helped their performances.

“Vincent was great,” Lopez once told VDO . “Very intense. Very intense on the set. And he’s a very sweet, funny guy, so for him to play this character, I know he had to concentrate a lot. So we kind of kept our distance because we had this weird relationship in the movie. He was like this freak-of-nature to me and I was like this victim to him. It was better that we just stayed away from each other.”

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Another reason D’Onofrio took on The Cell was due to the creative challenge that it presented.

“I thought it was a good chance to take. I’ve taken chances before in my career, so I figured I’ll take this one, what the f***, you know? I just kept it out of my mind that you’ll never be able to top an Anthony Hopkins performance, so don’t worry about it. It’s like playing someone who’s mentally impaired now ever since Billy Bob Thornton did Sling Blade . You can’t touch a performance like that. It’s like Streetcar after Brando. It’s dead,” D’Onofrio said.

To make his Cell character his own, D’Onofrio would improvise and deviate from the script often. This added an element of surprise to his performance that caught Lopez off guard. He brought up a scene where his character was talking to Lopez’s inside of a blooded bath tub as an example.

“All the times that Jennifer and I were together, it was very quiet, particularly in that scene. Her approach to it was very silent and my approach to it was very silent,” D’Onofrio added. “Nobody knew what I was going to say. They certainly knew by then that I wasn’t going to stick to the script. Jennifer and I never spoke about any of the scenes we were going to do on purpose. It got to the point where if anybody had interrupted what we were doing, the whole mood would have crashed down like glass. It was that fragile — quite an intense day.”

D’Onofrio’s unique way of performing also helped Lopez tap into certain emotions during the film. The Full Metal Jacket star was very coy about what exactly he did to make Lopez cry. But he hinted it might’ve had to do with something all actors could relate to.

“Then when the camera was on Jennifer, I did something completely different to bring some tears up in her. Something I won’t discuss with you. I said things that I knew would move her. But that’s not uncommon; actors do that all the time,” he said.