Once upon a time, Vin Diesel was a young actor making short films about being a young actor

Photo: Mark Von Holden/Variety (Getty Images)

Vin Diesel Short Film | Multi-Facial (1995)

After over 20 years of being in The Fast and the Furious films, it’s hard to imagine Vin Diesel in anything but a black tank top, doing anything but talking about family. Of course, he’s done tons of other stuff over the years, from beloved films like Saving Private Ryan and The Iron Giant to XXX, but if you want to go back to the beginning and see where ol’ Mark Sinclair got his start as an actor, you have to watch the short film Multi-Facial.

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Multi-Facial is a 20-minute-long movie starring, written, directed, produced and even scored by a baby-fresh Vin Diesel. In the film, Diesel plays Mike, a struggling actor in New York who goes through a series of auditions in which his racial ambiguity seems to play against him.

He first auditions as a “guido” type Italian American and tells a horrible and homophobic story about beating up his girlfriend (which is later revealed to be untrue and his manager’s idea). He then gets told he’s too light-skinned for a second audition, and the director suggests he tries auditioning for a Spanish role in a soap opera.

The story goes on, and I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s a pretty decent little film, and when you consider it was made for next to no money, it’s even more impressive. Sure, it has exactly zero explosions or rocket-powered Fieros, but it’s got plenty of heart, and that’s kind of Vin’s biggest appeal, don’t you think?