I always envisioned the Riddick franchise as a continuing mythology, so I always imagined that there would be many other films to follow. I’m going to do my best to channel the character on a spiritual level. – Vin DieselĬareer diversification ain’t a bad thing. I do practice martial arts, more as a recreational thing, but a lot of my friends have been heavyweight champions the in mixed martial arts world. – Vin Dieselįilmmaking is such a collaborative piece of art that you can’t look to one person – you couldn’t look to me, you couldn’t say, ‘Because Vin’s in it, it’s this or that…’ It’s really all of us coming together for that period of time to try and make magic. Their specialty is selling explosive hits without making a contact or doing too much damage.
The great thing about working with guys who have spent their life choreographing fights for wrestling is that that’s what they do. I used to do fight sequences, and I started to get self-conscious about fight sequences, because invariably the other person would get hurt, and you never want anyone to be hurt on a film, let alone you being responsible. It so often is about what the emotion that is behind it and how willing you are to really, really challenge that emotion or really take that emotion to that place so you’re feeling a certain intensity for the whole time when you’re shooting the actual physical scenes. – Vin Dieselįight sequence to me isn’t just about the athleticism. For me, I really need to stay in the pocket. When you come onto the set, everything should be focused around your character and you should stay in the pocket, as much as possible. The idea of exploring character relations and their development over a decade has to be appealing for any actor who cherishes his craft. If it’s an amazing role, I’ll do anything. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is to defy expectations. As an actor, not everything has to be the most obvious choice.
Five years later that skill helped me make my first film.
The whole year I was in LA I got into telemarketing and learned how to make money.
If you think about my filmography, I have never done a movie that a kid could go see, except for Iron Giant, and I’m not even on the screen. You know, Saving Private Ryan was not a fictional piece! So, the challenge was: How do you incorporate real emotions? How do you incorporate aspects that people are going to be able to identify with? – Vin Diesel It was interesting to do a completely fictional piece. I was taking my little sister to ballet, picking up my brother, sort of being a super-nanny. I had to do a lot of diaper-changing and lunch-making. I was the oldest of the children in my family.
I grew up the son of an acting teacher, but I’ve never been really good at articulating what that process is. Then you want to think about what the character represents, and you write down all of the elements about this character and then take the time to find some synchronicity and start breathing the character.
I don’t think a lot of actors talk about it, but there is usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character played prior to the movie. The first thing that happens is the cleansing of the former character.