Vin Diesel: Click Here For Vin's Filmography

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Hollywood is running into a new dilemma…it needs a flock of heroes and until recently it seemed as if we would see the end of the Schwarzenegger style man and more of the Hong Kong Jackie Chan idol for the next decade. With the recent flock of flicks (say that ten times fast) like The Bourne Identity, The Sum Of All Fears and Triple X, we can safely say that Hollywood has taken notice and is taking steps. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon will pick up the Harrison Ford style actioners while Vin Diesel takes over the hugely pumped up, riddled with one-liner actioners.

But Vin, despite his deep voice, can do something Schwarzenegger can't...say ten lines of dialogue and be completely understood without a single edit. Vin...or should I say Mark Vincent was born July 18, 1967 and though raised by his mother he never knew his biological father...however, his step-father taught acting at the Artistic Housing Project in New York's Greenwich Village. Growing up Vin found he had more fun running around with his friends and generally causing havoc.

So it is surprising that this little hellion would get his first break (so to speak) in the acting world after sneaking into a theatre to vandalize it. They were caught and the incident was overlooked on one condition. They would come to the school every day, an act that soon found Vin on stage.

If it wasn't for the theatre, who knows where Vin would have ended up. This was his first step and one he continued to pursue. He joined the New York Repertory Co. (which just happened to be managed by his step-father) before heading into the Off-off Broadway circuit to try out his talents.

However, for Vin it wasn't all acting…he had already built the body that the women fans love and he was earning spare cash by bouncing at some of New York's hippest clubs. It was during this stint that mark changed his name to Vin and added the Diesel...it seemed to reflect the power he had in mind when it came to his career.

Surprisingly, acting wasn't the full extent of Vin's pursuits, he became more and more interested in the world surrounding films and enrolled in Hunter College. He thought he would be an English Major, all so he could develop his ideas ito screenplays. After three years though he dropped out and headed to Hollywood to use his acting career as a stepping stone.

It was the same old story, he made the trip to L.A. but no one seemed to realize they needed him in their films and a return trip to New York was made. His mother though kick started him with a simple method, she gave him a book called Feature Films At Used Car Prices (by Rick Schmidt) and a new light went on in Diesel's head. He wouldn't just act in films, or just write them, hell, he could direct them as well, on the cheap and show them to anyone he could. This would be his calling card into Hollywood.

He shot Multi-Facial in three days at a cost of $3,000, a short story based on his own experiences as an actor. In 1995 it was entered into Cannes Film Festival and the response was overwhelming. Now Vin returned to L.A. but this time he had a film that had been at Cannes, and he had raised $50,000 through tele-marketing to fund his first feature, Strays.

By 1997 he had completed the film and again he had a film at a prestigious film festival, this time Sundance. Oddly though, despite some solid critical notices, the film didn't get picked up by any distributor's. Vin returned to New York.

Now, he may not have stayed in New York after this set-back, but it sure didn't hurt that he soon received a call from a Hollywood Icon. Steven Spielberg had seen Vin in his short film Multi-Facial and wanted to meet him. Spielberg had an idea about casting in his war film Saving Private Ryan. The short film would prove to be invaluable as Brad Bird also saw the film and loved Diesel's deep booming voice and cast him as the voice of the The Iron Giant.

Diesel had his foot in the door firmly this time but the amount of success and the rate at which it would come must have astounded him. He was one of the stand-outs in the otherwise weak Boiler Room and surprised critics when Pitch Black was not only creepy but he carried the film from beginning to end.

Then, in 2001, he did The Fast and The Furious, a film which I personally didn't get into you but did HUGE box-office and established Diesel as a major player. Now with Triple X about to do the same, a repeat of his Riddick role for the summer of 2003 in Riddick (the rumour is it will be a trilogy) it looks as if the action genre is safe for another decade at the least.

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Copyright© Staffwriter: Rob Paul