Vin Diesel

Vin Diesel (born Mark Sinclair Vincent on July 18, 1967) is an American actor, writer, director, and producer. Diesel is also the founder of the production companies OneRace Films and Tigon Studios. Diesel is distinguished by a bald head, muscular physique, and deep, textured baritone voice.

Biography

Vin Diesel was born in New York City and raised in Greenwich Village by his mother Delora Vincent, a psychologist, and stepfather Irving Vincent, a teacher. His biological father was African American and his mother is of Irish, Scottish, and Italian heritage. He has never known his biological father. He has a fraternal twin brother, Paul Vincent, who was born fourteen minutes after him. His brother currently works as a film editor.

In an interview on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, he stated that he changed his name to Vin Diesel while he was working as a bouncer because in that business, one's real name is not generally given out. The name "Vin" is a shortened version of Vincent.

Career

Diesel produced, directed, and starred in the 1994 short film Multi-Facial, a short semi-autobiographical film which follows the auditions of a struggling actor stuck in the audition process. With each film that he auditions for he is found to either be too black or too white, or not black or white enough.

Diesel was cast in 1998's Saving Private Ryan on the poignancy of his performance in Multi-Facial, and followed it up with major roles in Pitch Black and Boiler Room (2000). He also received critical acclaim for his voice work as the title character in The Iron Giant (1999). He broke through to mainstream audiences with the 2001 film The Fast and the Furious and the 2002 film xXx. In 2004 he reprised his role as Pitch Black's Riddick in The Chronicles of Riddick. He has announced his intention to direct Hannibal, and star as the Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps by elephant to attack Rome. Diesel was originally offered the lead role in Doom, but turned it down. The role eventually went to The Rock.

Personal life

As a teenager, Diesel was a skilled breakdancer and appeared in an instructional video on breakdancing. He appeared as a dancer in music videos for the rapper Kwame who is his cousin.^* Diesel is a long time fan and player of Dungeons & Dragons and other role playing games, a fact that he proudly states in various interviews.MTV interview. June 8, 2004. He occasionally makes reference to D&D in his films, such as in xXx where one of the tattoos on Xander Cage (Diesel's character) reads "Melkor," the name of one of Diesel's old player characters. (Melkor is also the original name of the Satan-like character in The Silmarillion and other Tolkien stories.) It has been said that his portrayal of Richard Riddick in the Pitch Black series of movies and games is based somewhat on this favorite character, a Drow "witch-hunter" who was a loner, and that Diesel has the character's image tattooed on his leg. He has also written the foreword to the commemorative book A Celebration of D&D, a collection of stories and essays which chronicles the history of D&D.

Diesel is also an avid fan of video games. He currently owns his own game studio, Tigon Studios, which produced Escape from Butcher Bay, a successful Xbox and PC game. His likeness and voice are featured in the game. At the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, a trailer for another game with his likeness, entitled The Wheelman, was shown.

In a 2004 interview in USA Today ^*, Diesel denied rumors that he is gay.

Filmography

Year	Movie	Role	Other notes
2007	Hitman	47	Announced
2006	rockfish	voiceover	Announced; animated
	Hannibal ^*	Hannibal Barca	Announced
	Tokyo Drift	Dominic Toretto	Cameo appearance
	Find Me Guilty	Jack DiNorscio
2005	The Pacifier	Lieutenant Shane Wolfe
2005	Dark Fury	Richard B. Riddick	Straight-to-DVD, animated
2004	The Chronicles of Riddick	Richard B. Riddick
2003	A Man Apart	Agent Sean Vetter
2002	XXX	Xander cage
2001	Knockaround Guys	Taylor Reese
2001	The Fast and the Furious	Dominic Toretto
2000	Pitch Black	Richard B. Riddick
2000	Boiler Room	Chris Varick
1999	The Iron Giant	The Iron Giant (voice)
1998	Saving Private Ryan	Private Caparzo
1997	Strays	Rick
1994	Multi-Facial	Mike
1990	Awakenings	Hospital Orderly

Salary

The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) $11,500,000

A Man Apart (2003) $2,500,000

xXx (2002) $10,000,000

The Fast and the Furious (2001) $2,000,000

Saving Private Ryan (1998) $100,000

The Vin Diesel "Fact" Generator

There is an Internet meme growing around Vin Diesel, where the joke is to suggest superhuman feats supposedly accomplished by him. They are always focused into his (alleged) greatness, prowess and "awesomeness," in a humorous way. 800 or so of the original facts come from a thread in the SomethingAwful forums ^* by forum member ScootsMagoo. They have been cited in forum signatures and small compilations. Examples include "In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Vin Diesel could use to kill you, including the room itself." and "The letters in Vin Diesel's name can be rearanged to I end lives". This, however, is not an entirely original fact as it has been done with other people in the past and all of these are predated by a Saturday Night Live sketch about Bill Brasky. These all owe lineage to tall tales such as those of Paul Bunyan. A set of Chuck Norris Facts was started, based on the popularity of the Vin Diesel facts, as well as facts for Mr. T and Jack Bauer.

References

External links

Vin Diesel Online
Biography: Vin Diesel (AskMen)
Biography: Vin Diesel (Lycos)
Photos of Vin Diesel (mostbeautifulman.com)
VinXperience
Vin Diesel Video

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