Source: Yorkshire Post, September 27, 2001
THE first action star of the 21st century? Maybe, but Vin Diesel wants to be taken seriously he tells Film Critic Tony Earnshaw.
He enters the room with confidence but no discernible swagger. He glances quickly at the handful of journalists gathered there, weighs up each in turn, pours a glass of water and then sits, his broad frame encased in a suit so sharp it could cut.
Vin Diesel is the man being touted as the replacement for the larger-than-life tough guys of the 80s and early 90s. With Arnie and Sly nudging pensionable age, and the likes of Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude van Damme losing their once cast-iron box office appeal, someone new and fresh is required. Vin Diesel could be that one. Big, mean-looking, with presence, charisma and arms as big as the average mans thighs, Diesel is a tough cookie. Even his name - he changed it from plain Mark Vincent - is hard. If he has a weakness, it is his too-small eyes. His searching gaze locks on to everyone separately. It is slightly unnerving.
You have to take in each one very quickly and then assess the
mob,
he says in his trademark growl, like Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen. For
the uninitiated, the 34-year-old New Yorkers career has taken off big-time in
Hollywood since he was selected by Steven Spielberg to join the ensemble cast of
Saving Private Ryan. Diesel was Private Caparzo, the first to die in the film
when he is struck down by a snipers bullet.
He followed up that inauspicious debut by providing the voice of the metal-gobbling robot in The Iron Giant and in the intelligent sci-fi shocker Pitch Black, playing a killer named Riddick who can see in the dark. Yet Diesel made his first impact in his own films, writing, directing and starring in a handful of ultra low-budget dramas (among them Multi-Facial and Strays) that set the US festival circuit alight. He still harbours ambitions to direct more, particularly a project entitled Doormen, based on his years as a nightclub bouncer but, in the meantime, is soaking up the eye-popping offers from Hollywood.
"I try to learn as much as I can from every experience. You learn how to read people when bouncing. Ive had friends whove had their necks slit from ear-to-ear from reading a person wrong.
"Its a survival skill. It took a while to shake the aggression. One of the things I noticed when I was bouncing was that even when I was going to auditions I always walked around with this 2,000lb gorilla on my back. There was always this huge monster behind me, no matter how cordial Id be. Even when I was trying to be as amiable as possible there was sometimes too much strength there. I had to shake it.
Quiet is very intimidating. Self-confidence is intimidating.
I still want to tell that story, but right now Im like a kid in a candy shop. Im
being offered these amazing roles and its just so hard to turn them down. Id
have to turn down multiple roles if I was to go back to directing.
His turn in The Fast and the Furious, a high-concept B-movie that has taken the American box office by storm, has elevated him into the pantheon of second league action hero. As Dominic, an ice-cool street racer, he blasts through the streets of LA in a supercharged car, dodging the police and the efforts of an undercover cop (Paul Walker) to nail him.
The film was green-lit off a bike magazine article, so the
script kinda had to be pulled together. I signed on after the director described
a scene where the camera goes through me and into the car, and the mythology
behind that. That did it for me.
He speaks in glowing terms of working with
Spielberg and of how a role was created for him.
"The role didnt exist in the script, but I wasnt thinking about that. I was thinking about watching Steven work. I would have gone out there, as a young filmmaker to shine his shoes. At that time the only recognition Id got was in a film Id directed, and I was going out there with that mentality.
The most confident directors are the most receptive. On the
first day he held up the script and said, This is just a blueprint. I thought,
Hes a guy with more accolades than anyone I know, more money than God, and hes
receptive?
The reason why he was receptive was that, although his film was
budgeted at $63m and the one Id just done was budgeted at $47,000, the
similarity was that we both wanted to make magic. Thats the lesson I learned.
Of his performance in The Fast and the Furious, director Rob Cohen said:
Diesel has what it takes to replace Stallone and Co, now in their
fifties,with a face more acceptable to todays youth-orientated market." Diesel
laughs. Its uncanny - like Lee Marvin resurrected.
"Im flattered that I can be compared to those guys, but every actors different. Arnold is not the same as Sylvester Stallone. Arnold wasnt somebody who was theatrically trained, but he made the best of what he had. Stallone made one of the greatest movies of all time, and wrote it, and that was Rocky.
"I am an actor first, indisputably, from all the time I spent hustling for off-Broadway plays. My history absolves me from just being an action hero. If you see my work you can see that Im attempting to bring more to the table, more depth. I go into every film I do with the same conviction.
Id love to do a comedy, but Im not the first person that they
go to. Knockaround Guys is a comedy in an American Guy Ritchie kind of way, but
not really. Im being presented with [tough guy roles] and its hard for my agent
to understand that. Im doing a film next where Im not the tough guy, Im just an
obsequious Everyman.
*The Fast and the Furious (15) is on nationwide
release.