Vin Diesel has been in Hollywood for a long time and is famous for his role in Fast and Furious, but how did he become so great and fast? In our Hollywood Spotlight, we will find out how he became so successful in the movie industry.
Early Struggles
Vin Diesel started his career in the 90s but struggled to land roles until he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the short film Multi-Facial and got noticed by Steven Spielberg, who was developing Saving Private Ryan.
Steven rewrote the movie elements to allow Diesel to appear in a supporting role. This was his first real experience with acting after small plays and an uncredited role in the drama film Awakenings. The movie Saving Private Ryan helped introduce him to Hollywood, but he kept working as a bouncer and a telemarketer selling lightbulbs to support himself.
His first feature-length movie was Strays. He played the role of a gang leader whose love for a woman inspires him to try and change his ways. The film, also produced by Diesel, was selected for competition at the 1997 Sundance Festival, leading to an MTV deal to turn it into a series. In 1999, he voiced the title character in the Iron Giant movie, and things started to look up for him.
The Big Movie
In 2000, Vin Diesel played a supporting role in the thriller Boiler Room, where he appeared beside Giovanni Ribisi and Ben Affleck. This movie paved the way for his breakout leading role in the movie Pitch Black as Riddick.
After released two movies, The Fast and the Furious and XXX, his fame blew up. His roles in both movies received many positive reviews from critics, but he turned down the chance to reprise both roles in their sequels and instead went on to reprise his role as Riddick in The Chronicles of Riddick. The movie turned out to be a box office failure despite its large budget. However, this did not stop him from voicing two video games and an anime film, The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury, based on the original film.
In 2006, after playing an unusual light-hearted role in The Pacifier’s comedy, he chose a dramatic role playing a real-life Mobster in the movie Find Me Guilty. Unfortunately, this film did poorly at the box office, grossing only $2 million against a budget of $13 million. This led to Diesel reprising his role in The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift.
In 2007, Diesel thought he might produce and star in a movie based on a video game called Hitman as Agent 47 but eventually pulled back and served as an executive producer instead. After the movie and another Box office failure, he returned to the Fast and Furious franchise with some of the original cast. Vin Diesel remained in the franchise from installments five to nine before reprising his role in the movie Riddick from the Chronicles of Riddick series.
In 2017, Vin also took his role in XXX: Return of Xander Cage, a sequel to XXX. In addition, he also played Groot in the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and has discussed playing two separate roles in the marvel universe.
In 2020, he portrayed the Valiant Comics character Bloodshot in the movie, also called Bloodshot. He joined the cast of the Avatar: The Way of Water and announced his venture into music after releasing the song, Feel Like I Do. He said that since he could not be on a movie set due to the pandemic, he is using music to share his feelings with others.
Recent Work
Awakenings (1990), Multi-Facial (1995), Strays (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Iron Giant (1999), Boiler Room (2000), Pitch Black (2000), The Fast and the Furious (2001), Knockaround Guys (2001), XXX (2002), The Turbo Charged Prelude for 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), A Man Apart (2003), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004), The Pacifier (2005), Find Me Guilty (2006), The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006), Babylon A.D (2008), Fast and Furious (2009), Los Bandoleros (2009), Fast Five (2011)
Work Continued
Fast and Furious 6 (2011), Riddick: Blindsided (2013), Riddick (2013), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Furious 7 (2015), The Last Witch Hunter (2015), Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016), XXX: Return of Xander Cage (2017), The Fate of the Furious (2017), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), Bloodshot (2020), F9 (2021), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).
Vin Diesel will play great roles in other projects like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3, Fast X, and Avatar 3. We can follow what he shares on social media to stay in the loop.