Vin Diesel

Vin Diesel (birthname: Mark Sinclair) is one of the biggest action stars in the movies, an international figure as the mainstay of the phenomenally successful Fast & Furious franchise. Diesel, though, had humble beginnings, starting with an uncredited role in Awakenings (1990), as well as a long patch with no acting jobs which compelled him to make his own films, including the short, Multi-Facial (1994), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and his only feature as actor-writer-director, Strays (1997), which premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

Diesel’s first Hollywood role was a supporting role in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning Saving Private Ryan (1998), followed by his first vocal performance in an animated film as the voice of the title character in writer-director Brad Bird’s acclaimed The Iron Giant (1999), with Jennifer Aniston and Harry Connick Jr. Diesel scored his first co-starring role in a widely-released movie with writer-director Ben Younger’s Boiler Room (2000), co-starring Giovani Ribisi, Ben Affleck, and Nia Long, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

Writer-director David Twohy cast Diesel in the lead for his sci-fi action-horror movie, Pitch Black (2000), with Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, and Keith David; the movie’s commercial success generated two sequels also written and directed by Twohy, The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), and Riddick (2013), grossing nearly three times costs with a $98 million global gross.

Vin Diesel’s career took a fundamental turn with the role of Dominic Toretto in The Fast and the Furious (2001), the first film in the series, directed by Rob Cohen, and co-starring Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, and Ted Levine. The movie’s unexpected box-office success ($207.3 million globally) triggered one of the new century’s most profitable franchises, most starring Diesel, as well as the actor serving as a lead producer: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006, in an uncredited cameo); Fast & Furious (2009); Fast Five (2011); Fast & Furious 6 (2013); Furious 7 (2015); The Fate of the Furious (2017); F9 (2021); Fast X (2023); and an eleventh Fast & Furious movie (2025).

In 2001, Diesel was also cast as the co-lead for producers-writers-directors Brian Koppleman and David Levien, Knockaround Guys, with Barry Pepper, Seth Green, John Malkovich, and Dennis Hopper. Vin Diesel’s third major franchise character, athlete-spy Xander Cage, was launched in his second movie under Rob Cohen’s direction, Paramount’s XXX (2002), with Asia Argento and Marton Csokas, earning $277.4 million worldwide.

The hit generated the sequel, XXX: Return of Xander Cage (2017), with Donnie Yen, Samuel L. Jackson, and Toni Collette, and grossing a brawny $346 million. Diesel’s first commercial failure was New Line Cinema’s action movie, A Man Apart (2003), directed by F. Gary Gray, featuring Larenz Tate, Timothy Olyphant, and Steve Eastin. Under Adam Shankman’s direction, Diesel starred in his first comedy, The Pacifier (2005), with Lauren Graham, Faith Ford, Brittany Snow, Carol Kane, and Brad Garrett, and became a commercial winner for Disney ($199 million globally).

Diesel’s second consecutive comedy was with his second world-class director (and co-writer), Sidney Lumet, Find Me Guilty (2006), with Peter Dinklage, Linus Roache, Ron Silver, Annabella Sciorra, and Alex Rocco. Vin Diesel’s first starring role in an international production was writer-director Mathieu Kassovitz’s English-language France-U.K.-U.S. sci-fi movie, Babylon A.D. (2008), co-starring Michelle Yeoh, Melanie Thierry, Lambert Wilson, Mark Strong, Gerard Depardieu, and Charlotte Rampling, and released internationally to poor box office by 20^th Century Fox.

Since 2008, Diesel’s movie roles have been generally split up between projects with characters Dominic (Fast & Furious), Richard Riddick (Riddick), Xander Cage (XXX), and the voice of the distinctive wooden character, Groot, in a number of Marvel Cinematic Universe projects, starting with writer-director James Gunn’s mega-hit, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), with castmates Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, ad Djimon Hounsou.

Vin Diesel’s Groot then appeared in a consecutive run of MCU movies, including Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and a cameo appearance in Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), soon followed by Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023).

During this period, Diesel took time away from the franchises to star in and co-produce Summit/Mark Canton/Lionsgate’s commercially successful fantasy-action movie, The Last Witch Hunter (2015), directed by Breck Eisner, with Elijah Wood and Michael Caine, as well as a rare supporting role in Ang Lee’s highly anticipated but roundly panned commercial bomb, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016), with Joe Alwyn, Kristen Stewart, Chris Tucker, Garrett Hedlund, and Steve Martin, and premiering at the New York Film Festival. Diesel starred in and produced another movie designed as franchise material, Bloodshot (2020), but whose commercial theatrical prospects (two weeks only in cinemas) were thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic.