Vin Diesel - the mysterious muscle guy

The recent box office hit Fast & Furious stars Vin Diesel, the muscular tough guy whose work as an actor is dividing opinions among critics and audiences. He is often considered as a man with just one face and role - the role of the ultimate tough guy who smashes everyone in his way, who does not smile or show any emotions. Some consider his acting skills limited because of this.

Not all think like this - when the director Steven Spielberg saw Diesel's self directed and acted short film Multi-Facial (1994), he wanted the man to work in his war epic Saving Private Ryan (1998) where Spielberg is told to have a role written especially for Diesel.

The New York born Diesel was born Mark Vincent in July 18, 1967 to an artistic family of a astrologer mother and a step father working in the theatre. His acting career started by accident when he as a schoolboy broke into a theatre, got caught and instead of a punishment was offered a script and a chance to come to practise every day after school.

At 17 athletic Diesel ended up working as a bouncer to get extra money. After a few years he dropped out of school and flew to Hollywood to make his acting dream come true. Despite his experience in theatre he did not get through, and returned to New York to produce, direct and act in his own film, Multi-Facial, a short film about a struggling actor. The film made its way to Cannes film festival and launched Diesel's acting career going slowly upward. Encouraged by Multi-Facial, Diesel collected money to fund his second film, a full lenght feature called Strays that was accepted to the Sundance Film Festival in 1997.

Diesel's deep voice gained him a title voice over role in the 1999 animation the Iron Giant. This along with the previous year's success in Saving Private Ryan landed him a role of the anti-hero Riddick in a sci-fi story Pitch Black in 2000. Riddick is a mercenary and a convicted criminal who has eyes that can see in the dark. The role was so interesting that a sequel was made four years later, with Riddick's name on the title, Chronicles of Riddick. The sequel was not as critically appreciated as Pitch Black, but it spawned a video game as well as an animation The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury. In all of these Riddick's voice is provided by Diesel.

In 2001 Diesel starred beside Paul Walker in the first The Fast and The Furious. Fast cars, illegal car racing, tough guys and sexy girls - and the franchise was ready. However, Diesel valued the role of Riddick over the F&F franchise and declined to work on the sequels. Also he took the bad ass role of Xander Cage in xXx in 2002 which almost gained him a Razzie nomination.

After solidifying his career in Hollywood Diesel started experimenting. He tested his comedy skills in a family comedy The Pacifier (2005) and in Find me guilty (2006) - a movie based on a true story of a crime trial of Jackie DiNorscio, who ended up defending himself and prolonging the trial for unbelievable time. Diesel's performance in both showed he has potential on diverse roles, even though because of his physicality, he is best as an athletic tough guy.

2009 brought Diesel back to Fast & Furious with Walker. Read the review of the movie in here.

In Diesel's future looms his long time dream of making a movie of Hannibal the Conqueror, which he would both direct and star in. Hannibal has been announced for years but the production has never started. Hopefully we will see this some day because Diesel based on for example Multi-Facial clearly has potential as a director and the theme itself sounds like something suitable for Diesel.

In his personal life Diesel is a mysterious man who does not much reveal anything of his life. He is a father of a daughter (Hania Riley) born in April 2008 with Paloma Jimenez. He has a twin brother Paul who works as a film editor. Racially he is half African American and half Italian American. He likes dogs and owns an Italian Mastiff named Roman. This is the most we know about the personal life of the former bouncer, now a moviestar Vin Diesel.