To see you shake?

Yeah.  And he sat in on the auditions to make sure I did it!  I was a sophomore, the play was the Princess and the Pea.  And I got the lead- the king.  And then I just kept getting leads through junior and senior year.  I found as long as I was under the guise of being someone else, it was a lot easier to talk, and not shake.  Like I had a justification.. "it wasn't ME on stage, it was THIS guy."  That was a very juvenile take on it, but that's how I saw it, that's how it started.  Otherwise, I couldn't even imagine- just reading in front of a class I would have a heart attack.  Called on in class?  Forget it.

You began painting at this time too?

Yes, I was also an illustrator, took private painting lessons with a woman named Denise Collins. Lot of landscape watercolor, moved onto oil, and then I started getting into scale drawing, that went into biological illustration.. Then I was in AP bio and they wanted me to do medical illustration. Anatomical textbooks. Hoffman Larouche wrote me a letter, said I'd be up for a scholarship- I picked my college because it was one of the few with an electron microscope.  That was Skidmore College.  Spring semester at Skidmore, I got to study at the University of Rome; I studied rendering there, and fresco in Sardinia, Italy.  So I was a bio/art major, thought I'd be a medical illustrator, maybe go into ichthyological taxidermy, since my other passion was tropical fish; been breeding them since I was a kid.

Tell me where it went from college, the acting.

Freshman year I tried out for a play, THE SUGARPLUM, and got the lead in that.  I didn't think I did a great job, but I got a lot of good feedback, that encouraged me.  By sophomore year I was doing a play every month, even stuff outside of school‚ I started this theater with a guy named Jonathan Foster, who got a lifetime achievement award from Cuomo when he was Governor.  I took a leave of absence my junior year.  I got into RADA in London- I went for a year there, came back to finish college at Skidmore, ironically I didn't.  There was a theatre company called Capital Rep in Albany doing a new play called Jupiter and Elsewhere.  As a lark I auditioned, I tried out for it and I got it.  My first Equity show, I was 21, I couldn't do school and do that, so I dropped out of school, like 2 months shy of graduation.  But I came back and finished that in between first and second year at A.C.T.

I went out to San Francisco, I got into American Conservatory Theater-I was the youngest one in my class, the average age was 33, I was 21.  And that was great. I did one year there, before 2nd year I went to London to study Shakespeare privately, and then went back after the summer to ACT again, two months before graduating I got the lead in this new theater; the Pacific Jewish Theatre in Andora, by Max Frisch.  It's this 4.5 hr epic where I play a Jewish Christlike figure- so I was doing this and going to class, and playing in Chekov's the Seagull.

How did you get to New York?

I was still working in San Fran, after the show at the Pacific Jewish theatre ended I moved back to New York- so that was Fall of 1989.

I know you've done roles/productions on stage like Dracula, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari..

Yeah I wrote and directed an adaptation of Caligari- a lot of fun, we had a great budget for it.  I was going to play Caesare but it was just too much.

Did you spend a lot on sets?

A lot on lights and costumes, I'm really into lighting, I love that.  I'm really into just an empty stage and some lights.  I hate sets.  My fifth production, I okayed a set- that was COUNTESS DRACULA, A GODLESS WOMAN‚ based on Elizabeth Bathory.  That was at the Kraine Theater in New York, in 1998.

And you also played Stanley Kowalski.

That was a recent stage role, a few years ago at Arkansas Repertory..one of my favorite plays, there's so much humor in the play that's often missed.  Ours had the menacing element as well; one critic accused me of ad-libbing most of the text because it was so funny in parts‚ but Tennessee Williams writes in one of his essays on this play how funny Stanley is- there's got to be a reason why she stays with him.  I was grateful do be able to do the part the way it was written.

What kind of stage did you do in New York?

I wrote 5 plays, one called The Necromancer which premiered at Alice's 4th floor, at 42nd street, that was about Bram Stoker and Sir Henry Irving, and where Bram Stoker got his inspiration. We were lucky- it was New York Post's pick of the week. We were mobbed.  And another play called Ghosts at Newstead Vault about Lord Byron; seconds after his death he imagines he's trapped in a vault with the spirits of his dead mother, his half sister, and his wife.  And then Caligari, Countess Dracula, a one man show on Byron, that was a one man show that traveled around to colleges.

Which is your favorite stage role you've done?

I really like Sir Henry Irving, eccentric old actor/manager. A lot of fun. I tried to do my best with the Dracula thing in 1999 I (acted in), kind of a mixture of Vlad Tepish, with a little bit of 20th century romance to the image, with a lot of inspiration from Max Shreck's Nosferatu.

Which is Dracula but never referred to as such.

Yeah! The wife of Bram Stoker was in a heavy dispute with Murnau about that- she was just appalled, they had blatantly stolen the whole thing!  Stoker had already died of syphilis. They never actually consummated their marriage!  She was having an affair with Oscar Wilde.. It was really warped! So she never got a cent from that.  But I love Nosferatu and Herzog's version as well, with Klaus.  Great.

Abel Ferrara's THE BLACKOUT was unreleased for a couple of years- I saw it recently-where the hell are you in it?

I'm barely in that, I had a few good scenes with Dennis Hopper that we improvised, he and I got along great.  But as punishment for (French actress) Beatrice Dalle and I running off together, Abel cut all my scenes.  I tried to get them back-I even tried to get them from the distributor.  Abel has them in his loft.  He even showed me them once in his loft one night when I was over-(Dead-on Abel Ferrara impression) "Remember this Vince, these were good fuckin' scenes too, if you didn't go stealing my best lady, motherfucker!! " (laughs)  I played one of Dennis Hopper's filmmakers.  And I had a scene with Matthew Modine, and Beatrice, I had some good stuff- it was all cut out.

Ferrara's The Funeral was after that?

Before that- I was rehearsing Caligari while shooting The Funeral.

First feature.

Yeah.  I was an extra in The Basketball Diaries back then too.  Nonspeaking junkie guy.  In The Funeral I played James, I pull the kid out the freezer, and rough him up.  Chris Penn shoots me at the end.  Hung out with Frank(John Hughes, Band of Brothers), they called us "Bacco and James". Sounds like a wine cooler. (laughs) Chris Walken would crack me up. (laughs)  It was so funny.. He was 'out to lunch' on that set..  We had fun.

What was the audition process like for Desecration?

I didn't really audition, (Dante Tomaselli) called me because he had seen me in The Funeral, I went to the audition, we started talking about horror movies, and we just kept volleying off each other; which was exciting, information about horror films you think no one else would know, we would talk about. And we talked about my theater group at the time, Vijil Group, New York's Theater of the Macabre (which put up Caligari and the other horror-themed NYC shows). He just goes "You know, you're perfect for Brother Nicolas."  I said cool, I'll do it.  I never read for it.

How was Brother Nicolas described in the script?

Tall, gaunt, very intimidating, very scary. (laughs)

Was the script very close to what you shot? Same structure?

Almost verbatim, and same structure, order.  Very much unlike Horror, where some scenes were cut since they were running out of money.  They really rewrote it as they went along.

How would you describe the way Dante works on set?

He's my ideal kind of director.  Most mature directors are like this, film or theater.  You're hired to do a job, you're hired to act, so they already know or assume you know how to do that.  So they're not giving you acting lessons.  Basically he didn't say anything to me, let me do whatever I want as long as it made sense- I'd check with him, say "I'm thinking of doing this, is that good?"

On the set of both films?

Yeah, yeah.  And during Horror he gave me full rein to ad-lib.  There is this faith healing scene where he just said "just surprise me tomorrow when we shoot this" and I came in with this fire-and-brimstone speech; so has total trust in me and I totally trust him.  But I love being allowed that luxury-that freedom. With Danny Lopes on Desecration, he would spend a lot of time with him, since it was his first movie. (Dante is) good, because he instinctually knows who needs what.

Were there any deleted scenes of your character in Desecration?

No, that was everything.

You mentioned majoring in biology- was any of your "teaching" scene in Desecration your suggestion? And what about the religious symbolism used to parallel the surgery descriptions?

That was all ad-libbed, I was just riffing there. Dante said "you could teach something here, Vince!" I don't write anything down, in my head I have a bunch of different ideas and I pick my favorite one and I'll surprise a director. If he says cut, I know he doesn't like it. The hard part was since itÌs all improvised, in the moment, I can't ever do it exactly the same way twice since I can't remember what the fuck I've done. (laughs) There were a couple takes where I erased the frog on the blackboard, so it would have been a problem if we had to shoot other shots of it (laughs) I love to rehearse, but I like to make sure it looks like it's just happening for the first time.

Your scene where you push Bobby over the edge with "Valium"-

That's all his, Dante wrote that.

Brother Nicolas seems like a paternal figure on the surface, while really pushing Danny off into these dark places. What's the basis of Reverend Salo Jr.?

Right-I came in with the idea on Horror that -the crux of my character was my problem wasn't with God, but with my father. I even say that at one point in the film.

Did he give you a background, a backstory on these two characters before shooting or were you free to come up with them?

Yeah I just came up with ones on my own.

How do you compare Brother Nicolas and Reverand Salo, Jr.?

Well the first movie I was Catholic, the second one I was Protestant, I'm hoping in the third movie I can be more of a rabbi. (laughs) Salo Jr. basically is living in the shadow of his father, who had a lot of notoriety and fame.  And I think Jr. wanted more of his love than of only his acceptance through following in his footsteps.  I was trying to bring more of a human element to Salo's character.  I had to do a lot of work in between the lines.

Your character, I hear, jump-starts the plot ‚where do you appear?

Actually Danny's character escapes along with other people from the rehab center.  I go there when my daughter is in the rehab center. I turn into (SPOILERS)

Was there a lot of rehearsal time on either film?

No. We would do run-throughs, and blocking.. the great thing about film now, especially with all these writer/directors (is) when you get the okay for improv, it's always fresh, it's terrific; it's not like a play where you're union bound by a Guild to say every word the guy wrote.

Want to change a comma, you need to make five phone calls.

The subtlety of (film) I love, which is my bag‚ I don't think there's a huge difference.  I don't do anything bigger on the stage, I don't do anything smaller in front of the camera.  There's maybe just a psychological adjustment.

Was Horror all shot upstate?

The rehab center was up in the Bronx, otherwise we were up in Warwick, NY.

How do you feel you need to approach a character?

I always try to work off what the other person is giving me, it's important to know where psychologically, emotionally the arc of where I am in the script, and from there, as long as I'm inhabiting that space, physiologically, there should be nothing I could do as that character that would be wrong.  As long as I'm making that person mine, being that person, that's how I like to be whether I'm playing Stanley Kowalski or Reverend Salo Jr.

I start out, actually, painting.  Painting what my "guy" looks like.  I do portraits, I do costumes, and I like to work with music in finding that character's rhythm.  I try to inhabit the character for as long as I can before I get there, so there's never a minute where I feel uncomfortable or I feel "I don't know."

I never see it as "the character" and then "me".  I always find that part of myself that is that character. Just kind of slip into it-

Is it harder to shake a darker, more extreme character?

I've had people mention this; during rehearsal and the run of a play or a film it's really hard to shake it off- I tend to be in that character, on and off, for the whole run. It's a lot easier for me just to come on the set.  That's part of the fun of it for me, looking through that other set of eyes for a few months or weeks.

Give me a dream part-stage or film. What characters are you itching to play?

It's a long list- Iíd love to take a crack at Prospero in The Tempest.  Coriolanus, Shakespeare's kickass Roman general. Beckett's Henry II.  Any Sherlock Holmes, or Moriarty, role.  Bazarov in Fathers and Sons.  In Bluebeard, the Gilles de Rais, sick as that is.. Des Hermes in J.K. Huysman's Las Bas.  Eddie in Fool for Love, Sam Shepherd's play.  Pale in Burn This, by Lanford Wilson. Another treatment of Dracula, Frankenstein's monster of course.  The Conqueror Worm, the witch hunter-that's a role I want to play.

Examples of Vincent Lamberti's commissioned artwork

Favorite period of horror films? Fave film? Usually people have to name at least five.

Definitely the Hammer period.  They kicked ass.  Love Lugosi's Dracula, Nosferatu, Bride of Frankenstein, Aliens, I think Stuart Gordon is terrific, he should have done more- there hasn't been too many good films lately.

I was getting to that. What happened to horror? What's been wrong? The 90's were pretty limp.

I think, lately with the reality TV and all that, I think the artistry has gone out because there's a pre-supposition from the part of the filmmakers, that there's not gonna be a trust or a suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience.  So they're gonna try to make it seem more realistic/documentary in nature.  I didn't like Blair Witch, didn't scare me.  It triggered nostalgia, personal memory of noises in the woods as a kid, but didn't scare me.

If we have to go to these extremes, reality shows- no one's gonna trust artistry, or something that is preconceived in nature, and the audience going in knowing that!  But the artistry comes in with them losing that knowledge, and becoming part of the moment-to-moment fear.

They assume people can't be scared anymore.

One thing that is also killing it is the morphing and the digital stuff.  I can tell the difference-

I think everyone can. With a makeup, even a bad one, there's tangibility there. With CGI-

There's nothing physically in space. Just electrical pulses somewhere..

It's easy to make someone jump in a theater by making a loud BOO! sound-turning the volume up to 10- - but that doesn't make you nervous after the movie.

Now usually we can call every turn that's gonna be made in a movie.  The directors set up these anticipatory frames where you KNOW it's leading to something, or they do that musically.  With film, much more so than theater, you could take the audience off balance whenever you want! You could just throw them into the abyss. And they have so many producers on each show now, you got all these cooks in the kitchen, and they turn out a big piece of shit in the end.  But as long as they have a good trailer, and everyone shows up in a wave that first weekend..  But the story is what matters- we don't want to see (the filmmaker) working hard at being clever. Stop trying to impress people!  Move them, scare them.

What's the status on HOT ICE, the thriller you're the lead in?

There's a website on it, it's been on pay per view in every Ramada/Hyatt around the world, pretty borderline, that film.  1999, we shot that after Dracula.  I've been actually recognized for that one, by guys in delis and cabdrivers.  Somebody's making money off that one... the script was pretty good, a detective potboiler, and when I saw the film- they had pretty much turned it into like a late-night Showtime film. (laughs) A lot of girl-on girl action- I'm like "where did this come from?" (laughs)

What do you have on the horizon?

There's a director I did a short with, Matt Fortnow, I'm supposed to be doing another movie with him this summer.  I'm also doing another feature called Goodnight, Sweet Ponytail, shot down in Alabama.  And I'm going to be doing a lot of commissioned landscape painting in Florida.  As long as I can keep doing anything that falls into creative parameters, self-expression-but acting is the thing I love the best.  It's another way of painting to me.

Click here to read Vincent's recomended tips for beginning actors.

© 2003 Adam Barnick
Desecration cover art & images ©1999 LD Media Corp / Image Entertainment
Horror cover art & images ©2003 LD Media Corp / Elite Entertainment
Paintings courtesy of Vincent Lamberti