Dane DiLiegro

Dane DiLiegro after a game in Forli, 2019

After graduating from Lexington High School in 2006, DiLiegro went on to spend a year at Worcester Academy, where he refined his skills as a basketball player in the school's postgraduate program. He averaged 11 points, 10 rebounds, and 4 blocks at Worcester. This led to DiLiegro receiving a full athletic scholarship to play at the University of New Hampshire.[2]

As a four-year starter for the New Hampshire Wildcats from 2007 to 2011, DiLiegro found his place on the team through defense, rebounding, and outworking his opponents. He graduated from UNH in May 2011 with the second-highest number of rebounds in program history.[3][4] DiLiegro made ESPN's Top Ten plays of the day on February 19, 2009, for a dunk.[5][2]

After going undrafted in the 2011 NBA draft, DiLiegro went on to play in Europe, being a part of Assi Basket Ostuni, (Ostuni, Italy), Dinamo Sassari (Sassari, Sardinia, Italy), Pallacanestro Trieste (Trieste, Italy), Hapoel Gilboa Galil, (Gan Ner, Israel), Mens Sana 1871 Basket (Siena, Italy), Tezenis Verona (Verona, Italy), and Pallacanestro Forlì (Forlì, Italy).[1][4]

DiLiegro won a gold medal with Team USA as a basketball player at the 18th Maccabiah Games in 2009 in Israel.[6]

Dane DiLiegro and Dan Trachtenberg discuss a scene while shooting Prey.

Dane DiLiegro and Taika Waititi on set while shooting an Xbox production

In 2019, DiLiegro was invited to work as a stand-in on Free Guy, which was filming in his native Boston. While on the set, stunt coordinator Chris O’Hara suggested to DiLiegro to look into acting.[4] Just two weeks later, DiLiegro was cast to play Protein in the Netflix show Sweet Home. The role required him to wear a foam latex suit weighing 80 pounds.[7][8] He followed it by playing Master Chief in an Xbox commercial. In 2021, he portrayed the titular character Ba'al in the fifth episode of American Horror Stories.[9] He starred as the main antagonist in the 2022 Doja Cat music video for Get Into It (yuh).[10] DiLiegro will appear in the upcoming Tom DeLonge-directed Monsters of California

He stars in the Predator film Prey as the Predator;[11][12][13] He performed all the acting, stunts and motion capture of the creature. Prior to filming, he lost 25 pounds and spent months training parkour, martial arts and strengthening his neck due to the new design of the Predator, which sat the 15 pound animatronic head on top of his head, forcing him to shoot every scene essentially blind.[14][15][16]

DiLiegro conducted a substantial amount of research in preparation for his role as the Predator:

"I went to mime school," remarks DiLiegro. "With this character I have task of telling a story to people nonverbally and there is an interesting factor with the Predator. You have to give the Predator a sense of personality without humanizing him. Because Predators carry this level of anonymity. I created a backstory for him. I don’t want to say it because I don’t want to create canon. It had a little hubris and maybe toyed with Naru (Amber Midthunder) too much and ultimately it got to him. It was an interesting task telling his story, what motivated him and made him fearful without using words."[16]

Director Dan Trachtenberg on DiLiegro's performance:

"Dane brought a lot to the performance, and I think this version of the Predator wanted to embrace that creature's performance much more where, there's much less of him just stalking in the trees, shooting from a distance. We're getting much more character, and storytelling, and fun little nuance-y bits from him as he interacts with what he's dealing with; and that was brought so much of what, you know, Dane brought to that character is what we embraced... but also, something I had not considered at all. And I'm so thankful for, is Dane's attitude as a human. He's a professional athlete, and you can tell, what I felt, whether it's true or not, is this guy was raised by a lot of coaches in his life. And I'm not an athlete, I love sports movies, I don't know anything about [sports], you know, so I recognize it just from watching. But he just had this, you know, he didn't complain, he could be sweating and in the most pain or whatever, and he didn't complain, he kept on going because we needed, because it's the suit and it doesn't always work and you got to keep at it. But like, the head is 15 pounds on top of his head, and he's looking out through the neck, so to get the Predator to look forward, which it's doing for most of the movie, if not all of it, he has to be looking straight down at the ground. So he's holding 15 pounds in a very weird way, and it's not just looking down, he has to do a weird hunch or whatever. And that's just to look like you're not a dork in a suit, thats just to make it look normal, and then he has to do all the crazy, just walking is a thing, and all the action, take, after take, after take, in hot hot hot [weather], you know? and having that, like, "I want to make it great. How do I? Let's go one more." That attitude is why his version of this creature is getting the accolades that it's getting, you know? It's really the whole personhood of Dane is part of the reason why this Yautja kicks so much butt."[17]

DiLiegro has confirmed that he will be appearing in a smaller role in the upcoming Lucasfilm production, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.[18]

In 2022, Comic Book Resources named DiLiegro among the top ten monster actors of all time.[19]

DiLiegro appeared in the 2023 Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3.