Vin Diesel Calls the Shots

He’s the most famous former nightclub bouncer in the world, a high-octane movie star steering not one but four enormous film franchises. Vin Diesel stops to teach us a master class in confidence and getting your way — two skills worth knowing, whichever side of the red-velvet rope you’re on

- Karl Taro Greenfeld

A basket and ice chest are lugged in by Vin Diesel’s anime-eyed assistant, Tiffany, who artfully arranges several square metres of breakfast on the table outside the studio where Diesel was booked to do vocal overdubs for Furious 7, the latest installment in one of his four massive film franchises that was released last year. But Diesel, still on the road at the time, in the passenger seat of a black Cadillac Escalade, inching through San Fernando Valley traffic on the way to the Warner Bros lot, kilometres of freeway between him and the oatmeal, breakfast burritos, French toast, pancakes, smoothies, and juices — more breakfast than one man could possibly eat — that are fanned out across the table like some Department of Agriculture food group chart. Tiffany, a Salt Lake City native who’s been Diesel’s assistant on his last three pictures, shrugs when asked why this much breakfast. “I just figure I’ll get it all”, she says, “and that way we’re sure he gets what he wants”. Which is what Vin Diesel usually does.

When Diesel arrives, his side-to-side arms-rolling swagger takes up a lot of hallway. His aviators never leave the bridge of his nose. He wears Nike cross-trainers, jeans, a grey T-shirt with “Alberto Crane Jiu-Jitsu” on the chest and a pair of maned-lion logos at each shoulder. He sits down, glasses bobbing on his long nose as he does an appraising little sniff of the spread, and says, “So what’s up? Give me something good”.