Name: Vin Diesel
Born: July 18, 1967
Eyes: Dark Brown
Hair: Black (if it wasn't shaved)
Height: 6'1
Marital Status: Single
Ethnicity: Multicultural
Siblings: A fraternal twin brother, Paul Vincent, and two sisters
Parents: Raised by his mother (an astrologer and psychologist) and
stepfather (an actor and drama professor).
Hobbies/Other Interests: Yoga, Snow boarding, Playstation, Dungeons
and Dragons, Comic books/Heavy Metal Magazine, Classic Movies,
Italian cooking
Previous Jobs: Telemarketer and Bouncer (9 years)
Education: Attended Hunter College in New York for two years with a
major in English (to prepare for screenwriting)
Vin Admires: Mel Gibson and Morgan Freeman
A little about him : Vin grew up in a government-funded building
in New York's Greenwich Village. The building, Vin estimates,
housed hundreds of families when he was there. Vin describes
his family as "poor but artistic".** Vin started acting at the young of 7
at a Manhattan theater, where he received $20 a week. He then spent
the formative years of his life trying to make a name for himself on off-
off-off Broadway stages while going to school.
At the age of 26, his film Multi-facial (a short film he wrote, directed,
produced and starred in) premiered at the Anthology Film Archives in
Manhattan in front of 200 people. The film later went on to the
Sundance Film Festival. "That night changed my life completely,
" he says. "I still went through a few more years of sleeping on
couches and struggling and taking odd jobs outside film. But I
knew my life had changed."
** After Multi-facial he went on to make Strays, a 1997 Sundance Film
Festival entry. And that's when it all began. Apparently Steven Spielberg
like Vin's movie so much that he contacted Vin, telling him that he had
written a part specifically for him in Saving Private Ryan (1998) as
Private Adrian Caparzo.Later, in 1999 he would provide his voice to
the animated film The Iron Giant as the Iron Giant. And that was just
the begining. Many more films were to come and keep coming.
