Quick Facts
- NAME: Vin Diesel
- OCCUPATION: Film Actor
- BIRTH DATE: July 18, 1967 (Age: 45)
- EDUCATION: Hunter College
- PLACE OF BIRTH: New York, New York
- Originally: Mark Vincent
- ZODIAC SIGN: Cancer
Best Known For
Vin Diesel is an actor known for his high-energy action movies, such as The Fast and the Furious franchise.
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Play NowVin Diesel. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 04:51, May 20, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/vin-diesel-9542476.
Vin Diesel. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/vin-diesel-9542476 [Accessed 20 May 2013].
"Vin Diesel." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 20 2013, 04:51 http://www.biography.com/people/vin-diesel-9542476.
"Vin Diesel," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/vin-diesel-9542476 [accessed May 20, 2013].
"Vin Diesel," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/vin-diesel-9542476 (accessed May 20, 2013).
Vin Diesel [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 20] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/vin-diesel-9542476.
Vin Diesel, http://www.biography.com/people/vin-diesel-9542476 (last visited May 20, 2013).
Vin Diesel. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/vin-diesel-9542476. Accessed May 20, 2013.
Synopsis
Vin Diesel dropped out of college to create his first film, Multi-Facial, which which screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995. His following film, Strays, screened at Sundance. Diesel’s work attracted the attention of Steven Spielberg, who cast Diesel in Saving Private Ryan (1998). He starred in several films before landing his career-defining role in The Fast and the Furious and its sequels.
Contents
Early Life
Actor, director, writer and producer Vin Diesel was born Mark Vincent on July 18, 1967, in New York City. Diesel managed to parley several self-produced, low-budget films into big-budget leading man status.
Born to a theater director and a psychologist (and sometimes astrologer), in interviews, Diesel has been guarded about his ethnic background. He started acting at the age of 7 at the Theater for the New City and continued to work with the theater throughout his adolescence. After working as a bouncer at several Manhattan nightclubs, he studied English at New York's Hunter College.
Film Career
Diesel dropped out of college short of graduation in order to create his first film, Multi-Facial. Diesel wrote, produced, directed and starred in the short film about a struggling actor willing to play any ethnicity in order to work. The film was accepted and screened at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 1995. His following film, a full-length feature called Strays (also self-produced), was accepted at the Sundance Film Festival.
Diesel's work attracted the attention of noted director Steven Spielberg, who was then starting work on his World War II epic Saving Private Ryan (1998). Spielberg tailored a featured part for Diesel and following the movie's release, Diesel found big-budget opportunities coming his way. In 2000, he turned in a noted performance in the otherwise-ignored Pitch Black. He then joined Ben Affleck and Giovanni Ribisi as a crooked stock-broker in Boiler Room.
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