Vin Diesel
The Times Magazine, April 2011
Travel really does broaden the mind. I went to Africa for the first time late last year, to see for myself how people are coping. Of course, my sister jokes with me, 'How come there were revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia just after you visited?'
Give a kid confidence and you give them a fantastic resource. Armed with that, they can out into the world and learn whatever it is that they need to learn.
Education is the great investment of early life. You may not realise it at the time, but you surely will later.
Parents don't always appreciate what role models they are. My (step) father is an educator in the theatre arts and thanks to his example I first stepped onto a stage aged seven (within a youth programme in New York's Greenwich Village). After that, there was no turning back for me.
Don't ever let us take technology for granted. I mean, the internet ... Kids don't know that just a few years ago there was a world without it. Let's not get blase or how will we cope if it's ever taken away?
That I have a multi-ethnic background has a h-u-g-e amount to do with why, unlike many other Americans, I'm so interested in the wider world (he is of Italian and black ancestry and has never met his biological father). Huge! Huge! Huge!
Be empathetic with the world and all those in it. I was raised by example to have compassion. It's too easy to judge others harshly. Take the harder path. Show some love.
We're all in this thing - this world, with all its good and its bad - together. Let's acknowledge that please and pull together.
Society loves to put people in boxes. I could not get a paid acting job early on because nobody was sure what the **** I was. I sent in head shots, I auditioned, I fought for roles, but all I heard back was, 'Are you black? Are you white? What are you?'
There's a lot of stuff out there on the net, but there isn't a lot of heart. There's not a lot of heart in the news either. All of which has coaxed me into revealing a bit more of who I am on Facebook (within two years, Diesel has acquired over 21 million 'friends', making him one of the most followed individuals on the site). I guess that shows other people out there are looking for heart too.
If you're down on your luck but trying hard, pray that there's another way of moving forward. Search for that way. Think laterally. Perservere and you'll find it.
The big bucks route isn't the only route. Independent - and I mean shoestring budget - film-making was my 'in' to the movie business. Who cares as long as you get where you want to go?
I'm a New York hustler at heart. Unable to get a start in acting there, I moved to Los Angeles and tele-marketed for a year. And I was very, very good at it! I quickly learnt that the guys who made the money were the ones who could change their voice. So by pretending to be from here, there and everywhere, I successfully sold agricultural tools to farmers all over the world.
I think I'm a sensitive, multi-faceted actor. A big part of the movie-going public thinks I'm an action hero. But hey, that's a blessing, not a curse. It's a blessing the world sees you, period. How they see you, you can't always control.
Whatever job you're hired to do, approach it with integrity. I'd love to be asked to do Shakespeare, but you can shine in any role. I wouldn't have got The Fast and The Furious franchise had I not impressed someone in Sidney Lumet's (1996) Find Me Guilty.
Displays of emotion are cool, but I try to keep it to myself a little. The highs and lows of life can be so extreme that I aim to keep myself somewhere around the centre.
Children are the most profound people you can know. They drive you crazy, but in a good way. My two-year-old daughter (Hania Riley, from his relationship with girlfriend Paloma Jimenez) pulls me aside and asks, 'Daddy, are you happy?' and it's like, 'Whoo! That's existential!'"
Copyright © 2020 Alan Jackson