THELOVE HE LEFT BEHIND
Five years after his tragic death, the ‘Fast and the Furious’ star’s family and friends open up about his life as a dad, his adventurous spirit and how they keep his memory alive
On the morning of Nov. 30, 2013, Paul Walker sat in his mother Cheryl’s Los Angeles kitchen with his daughter Meadow talking about holiday plans. The star of The Fast and the Furious series—who was on a break from filming the franchise’s seventh movie—wanted to pick out a Christmas tree that evening and decorate it with his 15-year-old daughter. “We were having this good conversation and he’d forgotten about an event he had,” says Cheryl. “He got a text and said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m supposed to be somewhere!’ ” As Paul rushed out the door to attend a charity car show for his organisation Reach Out Worldwide, Cheryl had no idea it would be the last time she’d see her son alive. Several hours later, when leaving the fundraiser, the 40-year-old actor decided to take a spin in a red Carrera GT Porsche driven by his friend Roger Rodas. It crashed ( lawsuits by the men’s families contested a sheriff’s report that the car was speeding) and exploded, killing them both. The accident left his fans reeling—and his family and friends devastated. Now, those
closest to the easygoing yet deeply private actor are opening up about his life and legacy in a new documentary, I Am Paul Walker, premiering Aug. 11 in the US on Paramount Network. “I think so many people think, ‘Oh, he was just a movie star who was killed in a car accident.’ But there was so much more to him. That was just a piece of who he was. He was an amazing man,” says Cheryl.
A SURFER TURNED STAR
Born in the blue-collar Los Angeles neighbourhood of Sunland-tujunga, Walker was raised by parents Paul Walker III, a contractor, and Cheryl, a nurse, in a tight-knit Mormon family alongside brothers Caleb, 40, and Cody, 30, and sister Ashlie, 42. As a four-year-old he began acting in commercials before landing a role in the Michael Landon TV series Highway to Heaven but after graduating from high school, Walker took a break from acting to move to Huntington Beach and do what he loved most—surfing. But when bill collectors began calling he returned to show business landing roles in films like
Pleasantville. A few years later he was cast as undercover cop Brian O’conner in 2001’s The Fast
and the Furious. The movie, with its elaborate racing stunts, turned him into an action star. But to friends and family, he remained the same down-toearth guy—especially to his brother Cody, to whom he was like a second father after their parents split up in 2004. “Paul stepped up in a big way for me, and took me on trips all over the world and taught me what it was to be genuine,” says Cody. “He had a huge impact on my life. I miss him every day because he was just someone I could call at 2 AM just because there was something I needed to get off my chest.”
HIS ROLE AS A FATHER
When Walker was 24 he learned his on-and-off girlfriend since high school Rebecca Soteros was pregnant. “He was scared,” Cheryl says in the documentary. “Emotionally I wasn’t there yet because I didn’t even know who I was,” Walker once said. Soteros moved with Meadow to Hawaii while Walker tried to find a balance between work and fatherhood. “He carried a lot of guilt for not being there all the time,” says Cody. Though Walker would often travel to Hawaii for visits or fly Meadow to his sets, a year before his death, Meadow decided to move to California and live with Walker, and they grew extremely close. “She moved back to LA, he’s really excited about it, and then poof, he was gone,” says Caleb. (Neither Soteros nor Meadow are part of the film.) Today, Meadow, 19, who reached a settlement against Porsche in a wrongful death suit in 2017, is a model in New York and the family says they’re not as close to her as they would like to be. “Whenever she decides she wants to be a part of my life, I’m here for her,” says Cody. “But I’m giving her space until she’s ready. Everybody has their own way of dealing
with loss. When she lost her dad, she lost her very best friend.” Says Walker’s father, “Paul thought the world of her. No father loved a child more than he did Meadow.”
ESCAPING THE SPOTLIGHT
Despite his stardom, Walker was always a reluctant celebrity. “By biology he was a leading man. He was tall and incredibly good-looking,” says Fast and the Furious director Rob Cohen. “But a lot of Paul’s interpretation of the movie business was how much it allowed him to go surfing.” His brother Caleb says, “He didn’t love the spotlight. He had so many other interests in this world that made him really happy.” Instead, Walker would retreat to his 350-acre property in Santa Barbara or vanish somewhere off the grid. “When Paul wasn’t making movies, he wasn’t in LA,” says his
Running Scared director Wayne Kramer in the film. “He’d be in the Amazon, or diving with sharks.” Walker, an avid car racer who had an eclectic car collection, was always seeking new adventures. His friend and Furious co-star Tyrese Gibson recalls the time Paul tried to get him to go heli-boarding. “He’s like, ‘Dude, the helicopter drops us off at the top of the mountain and we snowboard all the way down.’ I’m like, ‘Ain’t gonna happen, bro!’” says Gibson. “But that was him. Adventurous, constantly surfing, fishing and snorkelling. He was a huge fan of the ocean.” A GENEROUS HEART Walker’s parents say he always had an altruistic streak. “This sounds ridiculous, but I really felt like from the time he was little, I knew he was special and was going to affect a lot of people’s lives,” says Cheryl. “He was all about kindness and love.” Walker’s father remembers his son would give away Christmas presents to needier kids. “He used to say, ‘Just be nice.’ He couldn’t figure out why people would be nasty to people. It just wasn’t in his nature.” Later, he did considerable charity work, mostly under the media radar. When a massive earthquake hit in Haiti in 2010, he organised a relief team and flew there to help. He then started his own organisation, Reach Out Worldwide, now run by Cody, which helps get resources to post-disaster situations. Says his father, “Paul just reeked of goodness.” Now, almost five years after his loss, family members say they have their own special ways of keeping Paul’s memory alive. “I see him all the time, I just see his face. I’ll say to myself, ‘All right, what should I do, Paul?’” says his father. For Paul’s birthday on Sept. 12, the family’s tradition is to go down to Huntington Beach and throw sunflowers in the ocean and tell their favourite memory. “He was just generous and giving and real,” says Cody. “Anyone that knew Paul would say Paul made them a better person.”