Vin Diesel used a "student credit card" to finance his first film script.
Vin Diesel
The 49-year-old actor is now one of the most sought-after action stars in Hollywood, but at the start of his rise to fame, Vin was desperately in need of finance to get his ideas off the ground.
He shared: "To write my first script, I went to an early electronics store called the Wiz that was on 14th Street [in New York]. They had a policy where you could return anything within 30 days, no questions asked. So I went to the Wiz and bought this $600 word processor on my student credit card. I stayed up all night, every night. And at the end of the 30 days I returned it.
"Then I went out and rented a 16-millimetre camera on a Friday, because I didn't have to return it until Monday, so I was able to shoot for three days. Cut to my mom watching me roll an old 16 millimetre Steenbeck into my little room.
"I was cutting and splicing 'Multi-Facial' old-school style. This was before computers, really."
But, despite his uncomfortable predicament, Vin recalls his efforts to break into the movie industry with fondness.
He told the New York Times newspaper: "It was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful time. A lot of people say they want to be successful, to be at the top. That's not where the fun is. The fun is the journey."
Although Vin is now among the best-known action performers in the industry, his childhood ambition was to become a dramatic actor.
The 'Furious 7' star explained: "I thought I was going to be a dramatic actor. I started acting when I was seven. I grew up in the city, in artist housing on the Lower West Side. My father was a theatre director. When I first started acting, the whole idea of an action hero was relatively new."
Tagged in Vin Diesel