TORONTO—It almost feels like walking into a villain’s lair. The door of a penthouse suite in a swanky Toronto hotel opens and a massive figure with a shaved head and his back to the door rises to his feet.

In Gotham or Metropolis, one would be worried about a stern talk that starts friendly but ultimately moves toward a rehashing of how “objectives have been failed” and ends with shoelaces dangling over the side of a building.

Then, 6-3-and-a-half Vincent D’Onofrio confides that his buzzed dome is for the new Netflix Daredevil series, in which he plays a gigantic crime lord named the Kingpin. You don’t say.

D’Onofrio is talking to the Georgia Straight in a private interview during the Toronto International Film Festival for his latest effort, The Judge (opening Friday [October 10]). The film stars Robert Downey Jr. as big-city lawyer Hank Palmer, who comes back to the small town he was raised in for his mother’s funeral and ends up staying to defend Dad, Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall), against a murder charge.

D’Onofrio is firmly entrenched in the family drama as the eldest Palmer kid, Glen. “I have to say, to know that Robert Downey and Robert Duvall are doing a movie, right away you’re interested in what that could be,” the veteran character actor admits when asked why he wanted to do the film.

On the acting skills of the two leads, D’Onofrio—a highly regarded character actor who has worked with a lot of talented people in film (maybe none more so than the director who gave him his first truly memorable role, Stanley Kubrick)—uses the opportunity to gush. “Robert Duvall is what you would imagine: he’s just one of the most incredible actors you could ever share a scene with,” he enthuses, pausing to find the words to describe working with one of the most highly regarded actors in the world. “I mean, he’s just… Every breath he takes… Everything that’s happening while the camera is rolling is just… It’s like being in actor heaven working with Duvall. And working with Robert Downey, his talent is so present all the time; he’s so extremely talented. It’s undeniable. He’s very smart and he’s always concentrating on story and you get used to that with good actors. That’s what good actors do: they concentrate on story, story, story—always.”

Working with Downey and Duvall is just one more notch on D’Onofrio’s belt, in an evolution that started with him setting the record for most pounds gained for a film (a shocking 70, which brought his weight up to 280 pounds) for Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Ask what the role of the unstable Pte. Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence meant to him and D’Onofrio turns dead serious, his already soft voice going Charmin Ultra: “I haven’t stopped working since. I wanted to be a character actor and have a career and Stanley Kubrick gave that to me.”

That he did. Since that groundbreaking 1987 feature, D’Onofrio has racked up work on more than 80 productions. The most notable of those have been Men in Black and the long-running Law & Order: Criminal Intent, in which D’Onofrio was so cherished that when he left after eight years and was replaced by Jeff Goldblum, ratings plummeted and he was brought back for a tenth and final season.

And though D’Onofrio has always been big physically, he’s about to be big figuratively, with roles in the upcoming Jurassic World and the aforementioned Netflix series next on the docket. Information on those two projects is about as classified as it gets, however, limiting what the enthusiastic actor can say about them.

“Not really, no, because you’re not allowed to, you know,” D’Onofrio says when asked if he can elaborate on the roles he plays in the projects. “No, these days you do these incredible projects like Jurassic World and a Marvel series but you’re not allowed to talk about them. All I can tell you is that they’re coming out great. Honestly, they’re just phenomenal.”