Phrases

01. The most important thing in life will always be family. The people right here, right now.

02. Find your confidence, lead with love… the rest will follow.

03. It’s insecurity that is always chasing you and standing in the way of your dreams.

04. Being male is a matter of birth. Being a man is a matter of age. But being a Gentleman is a matter of choice.

05. Show me how you drive and I’ll show you who you are.

06. When people believe in you, you can do miraculous things.

07. I used to say I live my life a quarter mile at a time and I think that’s why we were brothers- because you did, too. No matter where you are, whether it’s a quarter mile away or half way across the world. The most important thing in life, will always be the people in this room. Salute mi familia. You’ll always be with me… And you’ll always be my brother.

08. They say the open road helps you think. About where you’ve been and where you’re going.

09. I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less, I’m free.

10. With age, you get to a place where you don’t want to knock people out. You just want to give people a hug.

11. IT don’t matter if you win by an inch or a milewinning is winning!!

12. It wasn’t until I went to college and I got my first motorcycle that I understood the thrill of speed.

13. You break her heart, I’ll break your neck.

14. I have dangerous bones in my body.

15. We’ve come a long way, from where we’ve been. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again.

16. Well, love motivates me in everything I do.

17. 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.”

18. Choosing the car you drive is like choosing your wardrobe, maybe even more important.

19. I’m not really afraid of the dark, except if I’m walking. The thing that scares me the most is the possibility of walking into a wall and busting my lip.

20. I am definitely a person of color.

21. You make movies for the people. If critics happen to like them too, well, that’s a home run.

22. I love women more than anything.

23. We all deal with being unfairly judged.

24. 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.”

25. If you believe in the project, you have to support it.

26. I used to feel guilty about owning a console.

27. The whole year I was in LA I got into telemarketing and learned how to make money. Five years later that skill helped me make my first film.

28. I never think of people’s nationality too much. I always look at everybody the same. It’s impossible for me to just say one group of people over separate groups of people. Maybe it’s because I was raised in New York City which is this melting pot. Everybody was always the same and the whole point of my whole film existence was to say that we’re just one race.

29. I shaved my head about 15 years ago and the first time I shaved it, I started running my hand through my hair and it was very therapeutic.

30. It’s like you have a child and you think, ‘Everything that I’ve done up until this point is insignificant in comparison to being a father.’ It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

31. A person in my position has to restrain himself.

32. I think there’s something we all relate to about…wanting to get to our most primal self.

33. Nothing comes easy when I’m in character, because everything I do in character, I take seriously.

34. I grew up with all kinds of people.

35. I’m a perfectionist. I’m very critical, especially artistically.

36. 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.

37. When I got on the set of ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ I discovered, to my amazement, that Steven Spielberg is a gamer.

38. A transvestite spends her entire life trying to look as feminine as possible and I have clearly spent mine celebrating my masculinity.

39. It’s really bizarre because no one knows this, but elephants have killed more animal trainers than any other animal.

40. I’ve been auditioning since I was 7 years old.

41. Career diversification ain’t a bad thing.

42. It would be flattering to call it a modern Dirty Harry, but I think this film deals more with the loss of his wife than the traditional revenge vigilante films.

43. The films that I do are deep, introspective, brooding roles that you’re in this heavy headspace all the time.

44. The video game culture was an important thing to keep alive in the film because we’re in a new era right now. The idea that kids can play video games like Grand Theft Auto or any video game is amazing. The video games are one step before a whole other virtual universe.

45. I’m a boy who appreciates a good body, regardless of the make.

46. Most of my confidence came from being with ladies, because I certainly wasn’t getting any acting jobs.

47. I could care less about being an action actor like Stallone or Schwarzenegger.

48. If you’re the type of person who has to fulfill your dreams, you’ve gotta be resourceful to make sure you can do it. I came out to California when I was 21, thinking my New York credentials would take me all the way. I came back home a year later all dejected and a failure.

49. When you go to the movies with your whole family, it’s a different experience. For some reason, it’s something that you’re all doing together and you take away something special in that.

50. If Clark Gable had a Facebook page, there would have been a Gone with the Wind 2.

51. You know when something feels so good but you’re afraid to feel good about it? So you kinda hold back? Everyone says, Congratulations, you must be so happy. And you say something stupid like, I’m just doing what little I can with what little I have.

52. 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 this movie, you can see a director who loves his actors, and it shines through the movie, in my eyes.

53. It’s remarkable how a soundtrack can be so important to the storytelling and the experience. I think the music is going to make people see the movie a lot. The music is going to make you want to go see it again. You have so much fun in the movie, and it’s music that you want to share with your kids, anyway.

54. If you had asked me back in grade school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said my first choice was an actor, but if I couldn’t be that, I’d want to be a superhero.

55. I don’t think a lot of actors talk about it, but there’s usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character that you played prior to the movie.

56. I’m an actor. I can do whatever I want. As an actor, not everything has to be the most obvious choice. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is to defy expectations.

57. The thing that stood out above and beyond all the experiences was this relationship with the nine-month-old baby. On weekends, I’d be thinking about going back to set on Monday just to see the baby.

58. I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

59. 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.

60. It’s very rewarding to see the movie, and it’s very rewarding to make the movie, but playing the character [Riddick] is sometimes a lot more difficult than other characters because it takes so much preparation to get into that character.

61. I always want another actor to shine in my scene because it makes the film stronger. I would encourage people to scene steal, because filmmaking is a collaborative effort.

62. I was the oldest of the children in my family. I had to do a lot of diaper-changing and lunch-making. I was taking my little sister to ballet, picking up my brother, sort of being a super-nanny.

63. Video games are one step before a whole other virtual universe.

64. I haven’t had that many weird encounters with fans, thank God.

65. Hollywood is more concerned about its male actors being in shape than its female actors.

66. If you take my performance or my understanding of the role and my appreciation for story and then dress it in CGI, that I guess becomes an action film.

67. 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.

68. I was a bouncer for ten years in New York City.

69. I’ve directed independent film.

70. You live these three months in this reality, in this dark reality, you don’t want to do those films every year because they’re taxing. I started smoking a lot of cigarettes.

71. Riddick is an antihero. He’s the quintessential antihero. We all know how much I love antiheroes. It takes you 45 minutes in the movie just for Riddick to understand the word “heroism,” let alone for anyone to hope that he can be heroic.

72. I love thinking about the film, the project and committing myself as much as possible.

73. 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.

74. It was interesting to do a completely fictional piece. 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?

75. The only way anyone knows which girl I’m with is if a one-night stand goes on ‘Howard Stern.’

76. I envision the future sunny and with love, harmony and oneness. I think Hollywood is changing.

77. I’ve turned down twentysomething million dollars for movies.

78. My mom used to say that I became a fighter and a scrapper and a tough guy to protect who I am at my core.

79. Vin Diesel had to hire a babysitter.

80. 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.

81. My gut feeling about sequels is that they should be premeditated: You should try to write a trilogy first or at least sketch out a trilogy if you have any faith in your film.

82. Film is my hobby, so I will work well through the night to develop films, whatever film I’m doing or dream projects I have.

83. I’m not disciplined enough to be a writer consistently. I write when I have to.

84. 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.

85. 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.

86. Filmmaking 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.

87. My mother is the most supportive mother in the world, she’s magical.

88. I’m a New Yorker. I always have issues with trust – you adopt it from being a New Yorker.

89. I am flattered that they think that many people would enjoy my work. I don’t approach any genre a different way than I may approach another one. I treat every role I do like a role worthy of applying whatever kind of tactic, process and talent I have.

90. I’m going to do my best to channel the character on a spiritual level.

91. I’m a fantasy guy. So I brought the fantasy element to the Riddick, David Twohy brought the sci-fi, and it came together.You see that in every aspect of the film.

92. In Hollywood, I think I get a bad rap for being a perfectionist. It’s something that’s not always welcomed in Hollywood, because you’re always pushing people and you’re pushing yourself to be the best that you can be.

93. The first thing that happens is the cleansing of the former 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. 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.

94. 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.

95. Fight sequence to me isn’t just about the athleticism. 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.

96. 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.

97. If it’s an amazing role, I’ll do anything.

98. The idea of exploring character relations and their development over a decade has to be appealing for any actor who cherishes his craft.

99. 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. The great thing about working with guys who have spent their life choreographing fights for wrestling is that that’s what they do. That’s their specialty. Their specialty is selling taking hits. Their specialty is selling explosive hits without making a contact or doing too much damage.

100. When I first did ‘The Fast and the Furious’, I didn’t want there to be a sequel on the first one. I thought, ‘Why would you rush to do a sequel – just because your first film is successful?’