From: Daily News Los Angeles
Wednesday, June 20, 2001
By Bob Strauss
Film Writer
Vin Diesel has used those oaklike arms of his for a number of tough assignments: playing fighting men in such movies as "Pitch Black," "Saving Private Ryan" and the new car-racing-and-crime opus "The Fast and the Furious"; making a struggling actor's living as a nightclub bouncer in his native New York City; even for writing a few of his own films. But now, what the beefy, bald-shaven actor really wants to do with those mighty limbs is embrace everything that he can. This is the kind of bruiser who attends interviews with his beloved, 3-month-old Cane Corso Mastiff, Roman (yes, there is a certain resemblance between the puglike pup and its master). As soon as he starts talking, you realize that Diesel is always in the market for a warm hug.
"It's funny; you see Vin and he's a big guy, looks like this real tough guy," notes friend and "Private Ryan" co-star Edward Burns. "And he actually is a tough guy. But at the same time, he's the nicest, sweetest person; surprisingly sensitive, real tight with his family, loves his mom."
"I don't think I'm more one than the other,"
says Diesel, 33, in a voice both raspily deep and almost femininely delicate. "I think I'm a culmination of everything, just like you are. There are probably times when you're more competent than others, and times when you feel less confident than others. A good actor is able to draw upon that. I can be different things at different times. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing -- it's sometimes confusing even for me -- but that's a complexity that's a part of me and I readily pull from it to whatever character I've committed to."One thing that's so therapeutic about acting is that you can define the parameters of a character and be that for a few months. And the parameters are clear, unlike with myself where the parameters are never really clear."
The same might be said of Dominic Toretto, the outlaw street racer Diesel plays in "Furious." A king of L.A.'s underground import car scene, Dominic and his crew run the fastest "rice rockets" -- souped-up Hondas, Toyotas and the like -- on the wee hours, outrun-the-cops circuit. His team might also be involved in a series of truck hijackings, which is what prompts undercover detective Brian O'Conner ("Varsity Blues' " Paul Walker) to infiltrate Dom's close-knit circle.
What O'Conner discovers, though, is a rough-and-tumble surrogate family of mech-heads, including Dom's real sister Mia (Jordana Brewster) and his driver girlfriend Letty ("Girlfight's" Michelle Rodriguez), over which the big guy presides with genuine love and personal commitment.
It's almost like Diesel was born to play this one.
"This is a guy who lives by his own code," says the actor, whose own set of principles has both enhanced his mystique and led to some controversy. "There's something very consistent about Dominic, who lives outside of the law but has his own moral framework, which consists of many favorable and admirable attributes. He's honest, he's loyal, he's a caretaker. What's so unique about the role is that there's not necessarily a huge character arc; he's constantly juggling the different aspects of his nature."
It takes one to know one. Diesel himself has a knack for keeping his image, at least, intriguingly up in the air. While claiming he wants to keep personal information secret in order to focus attention on his work, the methods employed -- unusual stage name, anecdotes of colorful exploits, carefully selected revelations about his past and family -- serve mainly to whet the public's appetite for more Vinfo.
What's with the name?
First, that name. "I was born in a gas station," the actor jokes. What we do know is that he has a brother named Paul Vincent, a film editor, and that they come from a mixed-race family and never knew their biological father. Diesel's mother, an astrologist and psychologist, and his theater director stepdad raised their children in an arty, Greenwich Village environment. Vin, however, is the only one who followed the seemingly natural path of acting.
"I've always been a student of psychology, of the way people work. I think you need to be to create characters," he says of his mother's influence. "As for astrology, I'm into it as much as the next person. I know how to do a solar chart, but I don't know how much I can pull and tell about your character.
"I'm a Cancer, with a Scorpio rising."
Intimate. But why won't Diesel tell us who he really is?
"It's not that I'm reluctant," he explains, "I'd just rather give you the inside on the film because, somewhere down the line, people can find out all that information but they might not find out my take on the current project. That seems more pertinent to me.
"Also, I like to go into roles without being, y'know, Monica Lewinsky. Imagine Monica Lewinsky or President Clinton trying to do a film. I'm just saying that I do a better job if I'm only accepted as the role that I'm playing. But if I try to ride this celebrity thing ... It's flattering, to some degree, to have people ask you what your name is and where you're from, and a person can buy into that."
Diesel may claim not to be buying into the celebrity, but he sure knows how to sell himself. A onetime Hunter College English major, in 1995 he wrote and directed a short film, "Multifacial," about the trials of an aspiring actor, and the following year directed, produced and starred in the low-budget feature "Strays." The films caught Steven Spielberg's attention, and he ordered a role for Diesel written into his about-to-shoot war epic "Ryan."
While he's written a script about his bouncer days and executive produced the upcoming "Diablo," in which he stars as a DEA agent suffering a psychological breakdown, Diesel admits that any creative activity outside of acting comes hard. As for the main job, for years that was no piece of cake, either.
20-year failure
"It was rough in the beginning because I wasn't getting anything," the big guy explains, the painful memory still noticeable in his voice. "I was a 20-year failure, on the score sheet anyway. I don't know why, though maybe for a lot of years I was so worried about the craft that I never thought about the strategy or the business. I come from this bohemian setting and I ignored the relevance of understanding the industry. I was just this guy in New York thinking of how to get that moment alive and how to be truthful. I spent 20 years trying to be truthful -- and unemployed."
All that's changed is the unemployed part. But Diesel's commitment to his artistic honesty has sometimes set him at odds with the Hollywood way of doing things. Most notable was an incident involving the highly unnotable action thriller "Reindeer Games."
Following his short stint in "Ryan" and his acclaimed (but unseen) voicing of the animated "Iron Giant," Diesel was offered a two-picture deal by Miramax Films if he'd play an underwritten, third-string heavy in the poorly received Ben Affleck starrer.
Though he didn't like the part, the deal and a promise by director John Frankenheimer that he'd beef up the role brought Diesel to the film's location. But when, during rehearsals, Frankenheimer said that he was too busy to improve the role, Diesel decided to drop out of the picture before the situation got unhappier. When Premiere magazine reported on the film months later, Diesel was shocked to find himself characterized as an egocentric villain in the piece.
"I was inconsequential
to the picture and thought I was leaving on good terms, that I did the right thing," Diesel explains. "Why should a director have an actor who doesn't want to do the role forced on him by the studio? It was unfair to Frankenheimer, and I was walking away from more money than I've ever seen, the whole deal. But Frankenheimer's ego was so bruised, he actually took the time to tell Premiere that he fired me. No director in the world would take time out to talk about firing a guy as insignificant as he thought I was."Disturbing as the bad publicity was, the fact that Diesel received back-to-back critical acclaim -- for the sci-fi actioner "Pitch Black" and an unexpectedly touching dramatic turn in "The Boiler Room" -- the same month that "Reindeer" bombed at the box office proved the actor's instincts right.
Those two films also raised Diesel's profile in both the industry and on the Internet, where female-operated fan sites have been proliferating ever since.
No sex symbol
" 'He's so ugly, I kinda like him!' " Diesel jokes, at his own expense
, about the tone of his admirers' gushings. "I never thought of myself as a sex symbol, and it's the one claim that kind of makes me blush. It feels so bizarre because I've always been an extrovert, I've always worked to get any attention or admiration. So it's bizarre to be charged with these things without having to work for it. But it's very, VERY flattering."The man is too humble. And we think maybe, just maybe, those sculpted granite -- but embraceable! -- arms might have earned some of that appeal.
"Kryptonics. Anyone that knows me knows I call 'em Kryptonics," Diesel says of the imposing appendages, which he has been mistakenly reported as nicknaming the Guns. "Why? I think because, when I was a kid, the Kryptonic wheels on skateboards were the phatest."
In the self-made universe of Vin Diesel, that explanation makes perfect sense.