Diesel was born as Mark Sinclair on July 18, 1967 in Alameda County, California, known professionally as Vin Diesel, is an American actor and producer. One of the world’s highest-grossing actors, he is best known for his role as Dominic Toretto in the Fast & Furious franchise. His mother, Delora Sherlyn Vincent (née Sinclair), is an astrologer. He was raised by a white mother and African American adoptive father, Irving H. Vincent, an acting teacher and theater manager. Diesel has stated that he is of “ambiguous parentage”. His mother is of English, German and Scottish descent. He never met his biological father and said that “all I know from my mother is that I have connections to many different cultures”.
Diesel believes his parents’ relationship would be illegal in some parts of the United States. because of laws against mixed marriages. Diesel rose to fame with two box office hits, the street racing action movie The Fast and the Furious (2001) and the action movie XXX (2002). He turned down the opportunity to reprise his roles in the sequels 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) and XXX: State of the Union (2005). Instead, he chose to reprise his role as Riddick in The Chronicles of Riddick, which was a box office failure given the large budget. Unlike his previous roles as an action hero, in 2005 he played a light-hearted role in the comedy film The Pacifier, which was a box office success.
In 2006, he chose a dramatic role, playing real-life mobster Jack DiNorcio in Find Me Guilty. Although he received critical acclaim for his performance, the film performed poorly at the box office, grossing only $2 million against a $13 million budget. Later that year, Diesel made a cameo appearance in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, reprising his role in The Fast and the Furious. In 2007, Diesel was set to produce and play Agent 47
in the film adaptation of the video game Hitman, but eventually pulled out and became an executive producer on the film instead. In 2008, he starred in the sci-fi action film Babylon AD, which was a critical and box office failure. Diesel returned to the Fast and the Furious series, along with most of the main cast of the original 2001 film, in The Fast and the Furious, which was released in April 2009.
