Vin Diesel had to hire a babysitter.
Any film that you see is never just the director. If it’s a film that you love, it’s not so easy to say, “Oh it’s directed by this person – that means everything that person directs is going be wonderful.”
I always have issues. I’m a New Yorker. I always have issues with trust – you adopt it from being a New Yorker. I think trust is something that comes from the gut. I don’t think it’s anything specific. I don’t think it’s anything tangible.
I’m a perfectionist. I’m very critical, especially artistically.
If you believe in the project, you have to support it.
I believe in paying special attention to every project that you do and supporting the projects you do.
When I’m writing, I’m locking myself in a room. I’m the worst critic in the world. I write something and then I beat myself up. I’m like “Vin, you’re retarded, that makes no sense.”
Of course, I don’t act in an extreme fashion in my day to day life. I don’t think any of us live do. I think we all have that reserve somewhere and we pull upon it when we need it.
When Lucas was doing Star Wars, he didn’t have a 50 million person Facebook following where he could just sift through feedback to try to get an idea for what he was going to do next. It’s a luxury we have today.
I approach every film I do in the same way, whether it’s an action film or not an action film. I guess if a certain physicality lends itself to action, but I started acting before I reached puberty. I was 7 years old when I started acting. It wasn’t until I became a bouncer in New York...
To have a director that loves his actors is something that you can see in the film and in the fruits of that labor. You can see that translated in the film. When you watch such movie, you can see a director who loves his actors, and it shines through the movie, in my eyes.
Unfortunately, in Hollywood, there are those directors that have some contempt for actors. We’ve all experienced that, in one way or another.
When I was a child actor, I had the fear that I was going to be cast as the tree.
I would love to do more science fiction. I always envisioned the Riddick franchise as a continuing mythology, so I always imagined that there would be many other films to follow.
When you come onto the set, everything should be focused around your character and you should stay in the pocket, as much as possible. Every actor has their own process. For me, I really need to stay in the pocket.
If I’m on set and I’m in character, I’m not thinking like a producer. If I’m on set and I’m not in character, wardrobe and make-up, and I’m just coming on set for the moments that I’m not shooting, then I’m able to be the producer.
Rated R movies are few and far between, nowadays. We’re all seeing less and less rated R movies, and less and less of them are being made.
I enjoy playing a quintessential antihero. There’s something therapeutic about playing such characters. I know it sounds corny but I feel like I learn about myself when I play that characters.
I started acting when I was seven-years-old. By the time I was 17 I would say: “If I’m not a star by the time I’m 18, I’ll get out of the business.”
The majority of the filmmaking process is in pre-production. The more you’ve planned out the more freedom there is on set to find new stuff, to play around, find new jokes and let the actors kind of breathe – but it needs to come from a place where it’s completely structured.
I grew up the son of an acting teacher but I’ve never been really good at articulating what that process is. It was always a bit more internal.