Vin diesel

The action superstar revs into high fantasy.

To look at, Vin Diesel doesn’t seem like a closet nerd. The gym-toned torso, the shaven head and that deep, sonorous voice don’t immediately mark him out as a geek. Nor do his films – action-driven franchises like The Fast And The Furious and xXx. But his hobbies? That’s another story. “I’m a huge fan of Dungeons And Dragons,” he laughs, when Total Film raises the subject. “It’s something that was a big part of my life and it’s probably affected the way I approach movies.”

For 20 years, Diesel has played the iconic fantasy role-playing game. Writing the foreword to the 30th anniversary commemorative book that came out in 2004, according to Wired magazine, he even taught Dame Judi Dench how to play on the set of 2013’s Riddick. Yet until the release of next month’s The Last Witch Hunter, the fantasy genre has “unfortunately” bypassed Diesel’s CV; no Game Of Thrones; no Lord Of The Rings; not even an episode of The Vampire Diaries. “Fantasy is something I’ve always wanted to do,” he sighs.

Not that he has much to regret. Now 48, Diesel’s career has been nothing short of sensational these last few years, since he took over the Fast And Furious franchise in 2007. While the studio was toying with taking the series straight-to-DVD after the lessthan-stellar third Tokyo-set outing, smartly, Universal offered Diesel the chance to produce, alongside continuing his role as street-racer Dominic Toretto. Originally mapping out a trilogy, which will span to five movies when Furious 8 arrives in 2017, Diesel put the wheels in motion for what’s become a Hollywood juggernaut.

With each passing film besting the one before it, this year’s Fast And Furious 7 shocked the industry when it took $1.5 billion, almost double the $788 million grossed by 2013’s Fast And Furious 6.

Forbes recently calculated that Diesel’s payout was $47 million, making him the third highest-paid actor of the year behind Robert Downey Jr. and, believe it or not, Jackie Chan. Yet all this success was overshadowed with the death of Diesel’s good friend and co-star Paul Walker, after he lost his life last November in a car crash before shooting was completed.

It left Diesel spent. “I was prepared to take some time off after Furious 7. It was such a tough one,” he admits. But then along came The Last Witch Hunter – in which he plays the titular immortal, Kaulder. “That state of mind of last year called for a kind of pained character – like Kaulder,” he says. State of mind?

“How heavy Furious 7 was; how exhausting, how sad and tragic and emotionally draining [it] was. I think people will look at The Last Witch Hunter and go, ‘Oh, I can see how this was the movie he chose to do right after.’”

Playing a character who witnesses the death of his loved ones, it’s not hard to see why Diesel was drawn. But there were other reasons: the chance to finally scratch that fantasy itch and the opportunity to team up with Game Of Thrones’ Rose Leslie (“I love Game Of Thrones,” purrs Diesel). She plays Chloe, a “dream-walker” with whom Diesel’s 800-year-old Kaulder must reluctantly team in order to defeat the resurrected Queen Witch, the crone who cursed Kaulder with immortality shortly before he killed her centuries ago.

It also gave Diesel the chance to work with Michael Caine, who plays a priest, Father Dolan. They’ve been friends for years. “We’ve always wanted to do something together,” he says. He remembers one scene, where Caine’s wife, Shakira, called them “spectacular” together. “The next day Michael comes to set and says, ‘You know what I realised Vin? You and I are the Laurel and Hardy of great acting!’ I don’t know how to take that but I guess it was a beautiful compliment.”

Then there’s the presence of Frodo himself, Elijah Wood, as another priest. “Employing Rose Leslie from Game Of Thrones, Elijah Wood from the Tolkien series, and of course Michael Caine from the Batman world,” he muses, “it’s kind of an ultimate fantasy movie, in the cast alone.” If nothing else, it gave Diesel the chance to geek out with Wood about his time on Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. “I could be a Hobbit!” Diesel cries. “I could give Elijah a run for his money as a Hobbit.”

Raised by a mother, Delora, who was an astrologer, Diesel – real name Mark Sinclair – admits his interest in anything beyond our realm isn’t merely fictional. “You have to be receptive to the supernatural,” he says. “My love of fantasy allows me to be open-minded. Anyone that really plays Dungeons And Dragons is going to be open-minded. Anybody that buys into Tolkien’s secondary world is going to have a great imagination. If I refused to believe in anything, I don’t know if my imagination would service me in the way that it has.”

Even before release, plans are afoot for a sequel for what is being dubbed the Axe And Cross series. If so, it’ll mark out yet another franchise in Diesel’s career – following Fast And Furious, the Riddick sci-fi series, his James Bond-like xXx and Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy, in which Diesel voiced everyone’s favourite talking tree, Groot. Remarkably,

Riddick aside, these franchises are all currently active – with Diesel admitting that in December he will reprise the role of Xander Cage; “It’s taken me 10 years to get a script that works for xXx.”

Then there’s the little matter of

Guardians Of The

Galaxy 2. “I just saw [ director] James Gunn over the weekend. Yeah, I’m dying to read that script.” Did Gunn indicate whether Diesel will return as Baby Groot, the sapling planted after the death of Groot in the original? He ums and ahs. “He’s told me some good stuff!” Either way, Diesel’s performance in the original – using just three words, “I am Groot,” over and again – was surprisingly emotional, perhaps because he recorded his lines shortly after losing Walker. “This was the first time I came back to dealing with human beings after dealing with death,” he says.

Diesel’s first voiceover since Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant, it was his young son Vincent (he also has two daughters, all with girlfriend Paloma Jimenez) who picked him the role. “He was four at the time, and I came in, and Marvel had sent over a book of concept art. It had all the characters there, and I said, ‘Which character do you think they want Daddy to play?’ And he pointed at the big tree! So, yeah, playing a tree is not something I would have imagined I’d be doing, but it was greatly rewarding. Just this weekend, James Gunn was telling me the highest selling toy in the world is Baby Groot; the second highest is Groot.” Now that’s what you call a toy story.

Even in his wildest dreams, Diesel probably could never have imagined such success – despite some 40 years as an actor. He began, aged 7, appearing in a production of children’s play

Dinosaur Door in New York’s Greenwich Village (a role, reputedly, that came after he and some friends broke in the theatre space with the intention of vandalising it; when they were caught, they were offered parts in the play instead of a trip to the police station). Aided by the fact his stepfather was an acting instructor, it sparked a youthful interest in theatre.

When he left school, though, it was anything

“playing a tree is not something i’d imagined doing, but it was greatly rewarding”

but easy. “It took forever to get any work,” he says. “I’d gone out to California, when I was 22 – 15 years into acting. And I thought I could get an agent, I thought the doors would open, I thought they were going to say, ‘We haven’t seen anything as good as you since Robert De Niro!’” Talking of ‘Bob’, Diesel’s first screen role was in 1990’s De Niro-starring Awakenings, won during this initial sojourn to Hollywood. And then? Nothing. Diesel had to return to New York “with my tail between my legs, looking for a couch to sleep on”.

Scratching out a living as a nightclub bouncer, it left him in a creative funk. “At that point, I wasn’t even thinking of being a big movie star anymore. I was just thinking, ‘How can I express myself as an artist, as a filmmaker, as an actor?’ Luckily for me, at that time, shoestring budget films were becoming popular.” He directed Multi-Facial, a 1994 short film about his difficulties getting roles due to his mixed-race heritage. The film was selected for Cannes in 1995; better still, a casting director gave a copy to Steven Spielberg.

So impressed, Spielberg cast Diesel as rifleman Adrian Caparzo in his 1998 WW2 epic

Saving Private Ryan. “The first time I ever got paid as an actor was by Spielberg!” chuckles Diesel. “It sounds like a Hollywood fairy-tale, but that’s how it happened.” Indeed, for everyone who thinks Diesel is just a meathead action star who got lucky, you only need to look at his post-Spielberg CV – from the compelling investment broker tale Boiler Room to Sidney Lumet’s courtroom gangster saga Find Me Guilty – to see that he can do more than rev an engine.

He’s just finished working with another fine director, Ang Lee, on Iraq story Billy Lynn’s Long

Halftime Walk. Pointing out there are similarities between this and his Spielberg film – not least playing a soldier again – “the difference now is that I was one of the kids in Saving Private Ryan, and now I’m the Tom Hanks character: the veteran.” He pauses. “What Ang’s doing in that movie is going to blow everyone away! Doing a 3D drama… people don’t even have any idea of what’s coming with that movie.”

Receiving such a directorial masterclass from Lee has left Diesel with a dilemma. He’s desperate to get back behind the camera (his only feature film to date is 1997’s Strays, which he wrote, directed and starred in). “I have to direct again. The issue with directing is simple. For me to direct, I’m taken out of the game for a year-and-a-half. The various studios in this town aren’t going to go for that so quickly, for me to take a year-and-a-half hiatus from being in the films that they need to have made.”

Such is the price of success – with studios fighting for Diesel power. For the moment, he’s also got Fast And Furious 8 to consider; the first draft is imminent. “I’m getting it in the next couple of days,” he says. “I’m very committed to that franchise.” It will, of course, be the first in the series (if you exclude the

Tokyo Drift spin-off) without Paul Walker. As sad as that is, Diesel knows the show must go on. He lives by one mantra when it comes to his work. “Two words: make product.” In Hollywood, that’s the secret to immortality.

ETA | 23 October The Last Witch Hunter opens next month.