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Heavy (1996): Vince played his first lead in director James Mangold's indie drama about a painfully shy pizza chef. ''Jim said, 'Would you gain weight for it?'... I ended up gaining about 40 pounds. I just gave in to natural tendencies to eat wrong and not exercise.''
Beautiful Girls (1996): The ensemble comedy-drama features Vince as Stinky, Uma Thurman's bartender cousin. ''Me and Uma got to be buddies,'' he says. ''I didn't think it was a great movie, but for a huge cast of stars [including Matt Dillon and Mira Sorvino], it was quite a nice group. It wasn't any kind of ego Olympics.''
The X-Files (1996): In the episode ''Unruhe'' (below), avowed X-Phile Vince played a Polaroiding psycho. ''It was so cool to be on my favorite show,'' says Vince. ''It was like actors who got to be on The Twilight Zone.'' Still, don't expect to see him at X-Files conventions anytime soon: ''That would be kinda frightening.''
Murder One (1997): Vince portrayed a vigilante nicknamed the Street Sweeper. ''I played him as not crazy,'' he says. ''I've always had a morbid fascination with crime books and serial killers. The words they're saying are monstrous, but they seem very sane, and that's what's really scary.''
ZELJKO IVANEK
''I've played a lot of people in suits and uniforms,'' says Ivanek. ''Lawyers, FBI people, military people.'' He thinks he knows why: ''I have this tidy look,'' says the single New York resident. ''My hair's kind of thin and just lays there. You can scruff me up, but you don't get very far.'' The remarkably humble Ivanek, 39, claims to have no clue why he works so much. Perhaps it's his Yugoslavian name, not easily forgotten — or pronounced (ZHEL-ko Ee-VAH-nek). ''I've known him 20 years, and I'm still convinced I say it wrong,'' admits Homicide exec producer Tom Fontana. A potential agent once tried to persuade him to call himself Ivan Cole: He didn't land the client.
Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-present): Ivanek has appeared sporadically as State's Attorney Ed Danvers. ''On paper, it was the dullest part,'' says Fontana. ''So I thought, If I hire Zeljko, he'll make it a real character.'' That he did, and last year he was rewarded with a big episode, in which Danvers' fiancee was murdered. ''At the end of the first night, I didn't feel like I'd hit it,'' Ivanek says. ''But Tom said he was happy, so I'll take his word for it.''
The X-Files (1994): Ivanek delivered a powerful performance as Roland, an autistic-savant janitor driven to evil by the frozen brain of his twin brother. ''It was short notice, and I didn't have time to do much research. But it came to me very easily. Once you feel it in your bones, it plays itself.''
Chicago Hope (1997): Cast against type, Ivanek played a militia man who takes hostages in a convenience store. ''I did it because it was like, 'Oh, look, a man not in a suit!' While we were shooting, I read [the militia manifesto] The Turner Diaries, which is just staggeringly illiterate and paranoid.''
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