Vin Diesel was born Mark Sinclair Vincent in New York City. Diesel has Italian and African American ancestry. Diesel rolled into theatre at the age of seven. Diesel became an active film-maker in the early 1990s, first earning notice for the short film Multi-Facial, which was selected for screening at the 1995 Cannes Festival. In his late teens, he worked as a bouncer where he adopted his stage name Vin Diesel.
In 1997 diesel wrote, directeed en produced his first feature-length film which was selected for competition at the 1997 Sundance Festival.
He was then cast in Steven Spielberg's 1998 Oscar-winning film Saving Private Ryan on the poignancy of his performance in Multi-Facial.
In 2000 he got his breakthrough role as the anti-hero Riddick in Pitch Black (2000). He then attained action hero super stardom with the box office hits The Fast and the Furious (2001) and xXx (2002).
In 2004, he reprised his role as Pitch Black's Riddick in The Chronicles of Riddick which did only moderately well at the box office. In 2005 he played a lighthearted role in the comedy film The Pacifier which was a surprise box office success.