How a serious actor got trapped in Vin Diesel’s body
By Matt Caputo
(Men’s Fitness/June 2013)
The sun is beaming down over the picturesque Canyon Ranch in Westlake Village, California. But it’s not the Heat that’s Getting to Vin diesel, it’s the constant ribbing from his entourage. Vin’s two lifelong buddies, Valentino Morales (a sup- porting player in most of Diesel’s films) and Dave Breaux (a co-star in the viral video of Diesel in his breakdancing days), are here cracking jokes and snapping their own pictures between takes. The gang goes back to when Diesel was just a train- hopping New York City kid, and they reminisce about how they all came West when Diesel turned Vincent Chase. “People don’t see him for what he really is,” Valentino says—in a Dominican drawl— staring in as Diesel poses for the camera. “They only see a buff guy. But he’s a genius actor.”
There comes a moment when the cameras are gone and Diesel and his buddies stand at a high point of Canyon Ranch because Diesel wants a group pic- ture. They lean against the vintage Cadillac and smile wide. For a moment, there aren’t any decisions to make or parts to play. Diesel can just be himself. “Let’s show them how we ball out,” Diesel says to Val and Dave with an iPhone pointed at them. “Let’s show them how we’re living—look tough.”
BOILING POINT
A little more than a decade ago, Vin Diesel swept into Hollywood like a tornado, nailing the trifecta of iconic Hollywood blockbuster (Saving Private Ryan), high-grossing action movie (Pitch Black), and dialogue-heavy art film (Boiler Room), all within a two-year span. Who was this bald, multira- cial bodybuilder type who could play a death scene for Spielberg, slaughter aliens, and then dominate a film about corrupt stockbrokers who do nothing but talk—and do it all with a bass rumble that made Barry White sound like Betty White? The movie business had never seen anything quite like him before.
While the acting chops were clear early on, it’s hard not to see Diesel as a born action hero. And he realizes he’s been typecast that way. “Being a physi- cal presence will rule you out of a lot of roles,” Diesel says. “I couldn’t have done Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with that physical presence. But I like it as part of me; it’s part of what I represent, and I think if Humphrey Bogart were around today he’d be a lot bigger.” If the home gym in Diesel’s garage is a sign of anything, it’s that he’s embraced his place in the industry.
“Hollywood is more concerned about its male actors being in shape than its female actors,” he says.
Diesel’s early life would seem to point straight to his two recurring roles—as street racer Dominic Toretto in The Fast and the Furious (the franchise just unveiled its latest incarnation, Fast & Furious 6) and the morally ambiguous title character in Riddick, a role he’ll reprise for the fourth time this summer. He was a gym rat who built muscle as his main hobby and made ends meet as a bouncer in the New York City club scene. “My only senses of gratification in my early life, for the most part, were my body and women,” Diesel says. “That was it.”
It’s a story that’s been told before. But there are de- tails of Diesel’s life that people are less familiar with. Like how he grew up surrounded by creative minds at the Westbeth Artists’ Housing community in Man- hattan’s West Village. Or how his stepfather, a drama instructor at New York University, taught him to take acting seriously. Or how his mom wouldn’t let him play sports growing up. Or how as a struggling actor he’d get up on a table to do impersonations before a roomful of nightclub security guards. Or how he used his basso profundo as a telemarketer so he could save up enough money to write, direct, and star in his first film, Multi-Facial, an exploration of his own struggles with racial identity.
Today, with kick-ass action-movie roles coming so easily, it’s not surprising that opportunities to see Vin Diesel the serious actor are few and far between. “This is a mafia industry,” he says. “When studios feel they can keep the lights on by putting you in cer- tain [roles], they do.” Adds director Ben Younger, “If you’ve seen Boiler Room, you have an idea of what Vin’s capable of. He can do anything; if he’d wanted to be a character actor he could have done that the rest of his life. And he could be a movie star, which he’s proven that he is.”
ACTING THE PART
Diesel is perhaps proudest of a small movie he made seven years ago: Find Me Guilty—the true tale of Jackie DiNorscio, a New Jersey wiseguy who defended himself in the longest Mafia conspiracy trial ever. It was a passion project, and one that afforded Diesel the chance to work with the late director Sidney Lumet on his penultimate film.
“I did the movie for less than nothing and I lost money,” Diesel says. “We were going to shoot in Canada, and I was going to get paid $1 million for the movie, and Sidney Lumet asked me, ‘Can you do the movie for free and we’ll do it in New York?’ I asked why and he said, ‘Because I want to fill the courtroom with New Yorkers and I want my extras to be hand- picked.’ So, I said OK.”
Part of the reason why Diesel nailed his role in Find Me Guilty is the way he prepares. For DiNorscio—who was imprisoned during the trial—Diesel left his apart- ment only to work, barely seeing the light of day. Gearing up for Dominic Toretto, his Cuban character in the Fast films, Diesel spent time in Cuba with his buddies, taking in the culture. For his part in the new Riddick movie, Diesel isolated himself upstate in Red Hook, NY, for about five months.
“People on Facebook knew I was MIA,” he says. (His page has more than 40 million “likes.”) “I was up in the woods, maybe 30 miles from the Catskill Mountains—there are only black bears up there.”
For now, Diesel intends to have fun playing the roles he’s been granted. He’s a producer on both the Fast and Riddick franchises, and that allows him to take the films in whatever direction he chooses. “There were scenes that were so dangerous that if the studio really knew I was doing them they’d have shut down production on Fast 6. There were days when I came home and looked at my kids and hugged them and thought, ‘Is it enough that it’s for the sake of art that I risk my life like that?’”
It’s this kind of dedication that’s earned Diesel the respect of his peers. “Being an actor/producer, you have to be selfless,” says Tyrese Gibson, star of three Fast films. “You have to get away from thinking about what’s good for yourself and focus on what’s good for the overall movie, and he does a great job of that.”
Nowadays, Diesel, a father of two, focuses on his home life, but that hasn’t stopped him from using his spare time to plot a trilogy of his own, about Han- nibal, the Carthaginian military leader. He’s already talked with Quentin Tarantino, among other poten- tial directors. It’s an opportunity for him to test his mettle in a challenging new role. “My chief concern is making things that are significant and allow people to escape in a real way,” he says.
The thoughtful Diesel would love to make more films like Find Me Guilty,with fewer fights and car chases, but the actor understands that good ideas can’t be forced. “I wish he did more indie stuff; I wish that more people saw him that way,” says Michelle Rodriguez, Diesel’s longtime friend and Fast co-star. “He’s got to be really, really picky about whom he works with. You’re talking about a guy who gets paid shitloads to do what he does. To do an indie gig with an upcoming director is tough.”
In the meantime, Diesel will keep playing the hero. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, he sent funds to cover two weeks’ worth of food for the residents of the Westbeth houses he was raised in. He and his stepfather also established a film academy in the Do- minican Republic through Diesel’s One Race Global Film Foundation, which trains aspiring filmmakers.
As the photo shoot winds down, so too does its star. Mark Sinclair Vincent is a neighborhood guy again, hanging with his boys. But still looking tough