Mark Vincent (born July 18, 1967 in New York City), better known by his stage name of Vin Diesel, is an American actor. Diesel is multi-racial, a fact upon which he based his well-recieved 1994 short film Multi-Facial , about a struggling actor who is rejected for part after part because he doesn’t look “black/white/Jewish” enough.
He’s quoted as saying his mother is descended from the Sinclairs of Scotland. Also, he has a dog, a mastiff. Diesel, who was cast in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan on the strength of Multi-Facial, broke through to mainstream audiences with the 2001 film The Fast and the Furious and the 2002 film xXx. In 2004 he reprised his role as Pitch Black’s Riddick in The Chronicles of Riddick, and will thereafter take on the titular role in Hannibal , as the Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps by elephant to attack Rome.
Diesel has his own film production company , One Race Productions , with long time producing partner George Zakk . In 2002, he founded Tigon Studios , a video game production company; it is named after the tigon, the hybrid offspring of a male tiger and a female lion.
Diesel is also a long time fan and player of Dungeons & Dragons and other role playing games, a fact that he proudly states in various interviews. He occasionally places references to D&D in his films, such as in XXX where one of the tattoos on Xander Cage (Diesel’s character) read “Melkor,” the name of one of Diesel’s old player characters. (Melkor is also the original name of the Satan-like character in The Silmarillion and other Tolkien stories.) He has also written the forward to the commemorative book “30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of D&D ,” which chronicles the history of D&D through various stories and essays written by various authors and developers.