ALISON JONES
There is something rather fitting about casting an actor named Diesel in a film where the car's the star.
The Fast and the Furious is the surprise blockbuster of the summer. A high octane thriller about illegal road racing that has taken the box office by storm and left the under performing Pearl Harbor choking on its exhaust fumes.
It has put the actors behind the wheel, Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster, on every casting director's A list.
Vin, who made a lasting impression in Saving Private Ryan and the sci-fi horror movie Pitch Black, is already being talked of as a Schwarzenegger or Stallone for the new millennium.
Though the shaven headed New Yorker admits to being flattered by the comparisons he is anxious to point out that there is more to them, and certainly him, than the size of their muscles.
'Arnold was not an actor by training. He made the most of what he had and did it brilliantly.
'Sly wrote one of the greatest movies of all time and starred in it when he was a nobody, Rocky, then he made whatever choices he did. I am an actor first, indisputably, because of all the years of training, of not getting film roles and hustling my way into off-Broadway plays.
'I started directing out of necessity, because no one was giving me the canvas to be artistic. So my history kind of absolves me from ever just being an action hero.
'Hopefully when you watch my work you'll see I am attempting to bring something more to the table, more depth to the character.'
In The Fast and The Furious he plays the leader of a gang of highly organised road racers who send their computer-controlled, fuel injected, vehicles hurtling along the night-time streets of LA at death defying speed.
The project was inspired by an article that appeared in Vibe magazine about the shadowy, adrenaline-charged world of import (car) street racing.
'It was pulled together very quickly,' said Vin. 'I signed on because of one conversation I had with the director Rob Cohen, who described this scene to me where the camera goes through me into that car and out through the exhaust. I liked the mythology behind that, like a Centaur, half man half horsepower.'
He describes his character, Dominic Toretto, as 'an alpha male, a care taker' attributes that the former doorman takes from his own personality.
'As an actor, to be truthful you have to find a kind of relationship with the role, to find the parallel between your life and theirs.
'Humans are very complex and one of the luxuries of making films is being able to play someone with very clear parameters. You have to know exactly who he is and what his limitations are. If you are the type of person who thinks a lot about life and questions your identity, it can be very therapeutic.'
In spite of his years guarding nightclub doors and casting out undesirables for wearing trainers, Vin is far from the knuckleheaded, dinner-jacketed archetype.
He actually regards his years of barring the way of the inebriated and inappropriately dressed as excellent training for his work as a director on the short Multifacial and the low budget full-length feature Strays .
'Being a doorman is amazing for teaching you how to handle people and being effective in speech.
'I learnt how to read people. I had a friend who had his neck slit from ear to ear because he read someone wrong. It's a survival skill.'
Now he prefers to learn by watching other experts at work, such as Steven Spielberg on the set of Private Ryan.
The part of Private Carpazo, who is shot while trying to save a stranded family, was written specially for him.
'That was the highest form of validation. When I was at school I wasn't the kid getting the awards and suddenly I was the subject of a Hollywood fairytale.
'That was when I started believing all those anecdotes about old time actors like Clarke Gable being discovered off a hay truck.'
He was so keen to learn at the feet of the master that he was not bothered that he was only handed a completed script as he stepped on the plane. I was thinking about watching Steven work. As a young film maker myself I would have gone out there to shine his shoes.
'His way of directing is very efficient. He is brilliant at knowing which lens to use to capture a mood, at turning just a gesture into a beautiful scene.'
Vin admitted that he was stunned when, on the first day of filming, Spielberg invited all the actors to come forward to offer any ideas they had.
'Here is the guy with more accolades than anyone I know and more money than God and he's receptive!
'Yet I got why he was receptive. Because although his movie was budgeted at $67 million and the film I had just made and been at Sundance with cost $47,000, there was a similarity and that was we both wanted to make magic.' Receptive though the Oscar winning auteur was he decided to ignore Vin's appeals to let him live in the movie.
'I hated that I was the first to die. I pleaded with Steven to just make him a boxer and shoot him in the arm and let his tragedy be that he could never box again.
'But, looking back, it made sense for him to kill the most formidable character first because you got a sense of the dangers that were present in war.
'The producer said afterwards that it was fortunate that I died first because everyone was now in restless anticipation of what I would do next as they didn't get enough of me the first time.'
The Fast and the Furious is on general release now.