The drive of Vin Diesel

Actor on a roll with the opening of two major films

	VIN DIESEL ON...
...the plot of his film "Pitch Black" [415k WAV] or [2.6Mb QuickTime] ...his day under the big top [417k WAV] or [3.2Mb QuickTime]
	VIDEO
Theatrical preview for "Pitch Black" Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K Theatrical preview for "Boiler Room" QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K

February 21, 2000
Web posted at: 2:06 p.m. EST (1906 GMT)

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Thanks for joining our slide show highlighting some of the moments in Vin Diesel's life that led him to become a successful actor.

Vin, as you might know, stars in two films that opened nationwide this past weekend -- "Pitch Black" (USA Films), a sci-fi thriller co-starring Radha Mitchell ("High Art") set on a desolate planet inhabited by man-eating monsters; and "Boiler Room" (New Line Cinema), a testosterone-laden film set in the high-pressure confines of an illegal stock-trading firm.

"The movies couldn't be more different from each other," our slide-show subject says.

But let's get on with the show. Somebody turn down the lights.

CLICK.

Here's where Vin grew up -- a government-funded building in New York's Greenwich Village. The building, Vin estimates, housed hundreds of families when he was there. Vin describes his family as poor but artistic.

CLICK.

This is Vin when he was 3. Yes, those are lions in the background. He's at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with his mom. The animals have just completed their show, and at this moment Vin is actually trying to climb into the ring.

Any second now, his mom will snatch him away.

"What in the world are you doing?" she'll ask.

"Mommy, I'm ready to do my show now," he'll answer. That's a story Vin tells to prove he's always wanted to be a performer.

CLICK.

Here he is at 7 years old. See that look on his face? He's up to no good. He and his friends wandered into this lower Manhattan theater in the middle of the day -- uninvited. Authorities call it trespassing. You could say, then, that Vin trespassed into a career in acting, because someone at the theater was watching him that day.

"This woman comes from the darkness into the spotlight and says, 'Get down here right this minute!'" Vin recalls. "I'm somewhere up in the mezzanine. When I get down there, she hands us scripts. She says, 'If you want to play here, be here every day at 4pm. Here's $20 a week.'

Scenes from "Pitch Black:"

"That was the first time I was ever paid for acting," he says. "At that time of my life that was a heavy gig."

Other gigs would follow. Vin spent the formative years of his life trying to make a name for himself on off-off-off-Broadway stages while going to school.

CLICK.

Vin's 26 in this one. See that big smile? See all the people patting him on the back and shaking his hand? He's just premiered his first short film -- he wrote, directed, produced and starred in it -- in front of more than 200 people at the Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan.

The film is called "Multi-Facial." It went on to screen at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, and introduced Vin as a serious talent in the film world.

"That night changed my life completely," he says. "I still went through a few more years of sleeping on couches and struggling and taking odd jobs outside film. But I knew my life had changed."

"Multi-Facial" led him to make an indie feature film called "Strays," a Sundance '97 entry. And that led to something even greater in 1998. Remember Pvt. Caparzo in "Saving Private Ryan," that Oscar-winning film directed by a guy named Steven Spielberg? Yes. That was Vin in dog tags.

CLICK.

And here's the 32-year-old Vin today, sitting in front of a CNN camera, talking about "Pitch Black." He's imposing, isn't he? The guy exudes a semitruck aura that fits neatly to his stage name. Come on, you didn't think "Vin Diesel" was his real logon, did you?

But it's the best we're going to get. Vin didn't tell us the name his mother gave him. Neither did the folks at USA Films: "We only known Vin Diesel as Vin Diesel."

Regardless of his name, Vin's physical presence -- including a steely voice that sounds like a computer-generated version of James Earl Jones' baritone pipes -- has not always been an asset.

"I was a bouncer for nine years," he says. "Even when I would go on auditions, I had to be as amiable as possible. But I still had this edge, this threatening physical presence. And I know that isn't who I really am."

It's interesting to note that Vin's character in "Pitch Black," a convicted murderer named Riddick, goes through a slightly similar character arc.

The film -- told through Riddick's eyes -- begins with a spaceship's crash landing on the aforementioned desolate planet. Riddick escapes from the lawman responsible for him, and the crew -- including a co-pilot played with Sigourney Weaver-like flair by Mitchell -- fears Riddick will come after them.

Instead, strange creatures native to the planet engage in the blood-letting after a rare total eclipse of the planet's three suns leaves everyone in the dark. They look like a hybrid of bats and dinosaurs -- flying around using sonar and smell and tearing up their two-legged prey like seagulls fighting over french fries at the beach.

The surviving crew eventually count on Riddick to stay alive -- in part because of his surgically altered pupils, which allow him to see the monsters in the pitch-black night. The bad guy becomes the good guy, a role Vin appreciates.

"The film describes him as this convicted killer, but doesn't give any explanation or justification for it," Vin says. "We find out later that maybe he was misrepresented. Maybe we prejudged him. Maybe we just critiqued him and measured him by what we heard.

Scenes from "Boiler Room:"

"The Riddick character represents anybody who's been ruled out, given up on, prejudged," he says.

Another selling point for "Pitch Black" is the setting. Before night falls, the golden landscape of the planet reflects off an atmosphere of metallic haze -- a scene director David Twohy couldn't find on a Hollywood set. Those images were filmed at Coober Pedy in Australia. You may recognize it from Mel Gibson's "Mad Max" and "The Road Warrior" films.

"It's a celestial place," Vin says. "There are these large plate-like rocks that have a reflective coat, like gold. When you look at it from afar, it looks like a sea of diamonds. You couldn't recreate that. Coober Pedy is a magical place."

It has yet to be determined whether movie audiences will find "Pitch Black" a magical experience. The film opened at No. 4 this past weekend, taking in $11.1 million. But studios believe second-week profits are better gauges for predicting a film's long-term performance at the box office.

One obvious question: Is there hope at today's cineplex for another sci-fi flick about a band of humans running from man-eating monsters? Vin admits this film has ancestors in the "Alien" and "Predator" series.

"There are a lot of films that explore sci-fi," says Vin. "What attracted me to the script is the fact that this film stands on its own. The characters and their relationships are interesting by themselves, without the creature element. In many ways it's a modern day 'Lord of the Flies.'"

CLICK.

Here's Vin in his other new movie, "Boiler Room," which opened at No. 8 ($6.8 million) this past weekend. Giovanni Ribisi ("Saving Private Ryan") and Nia Long ("The Best Man") also star. Ben Affleck has a minor role as head recruiter, too.

Vin looks nice in a tie, doesn't he? Don't fall for it. In the film, he plays a guy named Chris, a fast-talking millionaire "broker" who'd sell you dubious stocks over the phone before you could say, "It's a dot-com world."

As he did in the Riddick character, Vin says he drew from personal experience to create his "Boiler Room" personage. And he's hoping the film will make up for career sacrifices he made when he was still a struggling actor.

"I did 'Boiler Room' to redeem myself," he says. "To make 'Strays' I telemarketed. I sold tools over the phone for more money than they were probably worth. Shameless job. You bother a lot of people by calling them. By doing this film, I put out the message that anytime anybody calls you to sell anything, hang up the phone. Hopefully, I've redeemed myself."

CLICK.

Yes, this is the same slide we showed you earlier from the "Multi-Facial" screening that changed Vin's life. We think it should be revisited because it almost didn't happen.

Vin nearly gave up on "Multi-Facial." People didn't exactly give him positive feedback while he was making it. When they looked at him, they saw a bouncer, a struggling actor -- the old stereotypes, holding him down -- not a filmmaker. Vin finally walked away from his project before he had finished editing it.

Then one day his dad sat him down and said, "Son, if you're going to do one thing with your life, finish that film."

"It was an important lesson for me to learn," Vin says now, "to be thorough, to finish what you start."

Now he seems impossible to stop -- as determined as a diesel engine ever since he tried to jump into a ring of lions. Perhaps his previous name doesn't matter after all.

'Nine Yards,' 'Hanging Up' fight for top box-office spot
February 20, 2000
'Boiler Room' exposes ugly underbelly of investment scams
February 17, 2000

'Pitch Black'

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