Stanley Kubrick asked Vincent D’Onofrio to become “Lon Chaney big” for his role as Private Leonard Lawrence in *Full Metal Jacket*, invoking the silent-era actor renowned for extreme physical transformations. The request helped shape one of the film’s most memorable performances and illustrates how Chaney’s influence continued well beyond early horror cinema.

D’Onofrio gained about 70 pounds (32kg), reaching roughly 280 pounds, to play the vulnerable Marine recruit nicknamed Gomer Pyle in Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam War drama. The weight contributed to a knee injury during filming and took him around nine months to lose afterwards; Chaney, known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces”, had become famous through transformative roles including *The Hunchback of Notre Dame* and *The Phantom of the Opera*.