You know what would be really great? Being friends with Vin Diesel. You could get into all of the best restaurants and clubs, hang out in matching muscle shirts on the beach — heck, he’d probably even let you ride around on his enormous shoulders like an oversized kid. One thing you wouldn’t want to do, though: lend him the keys to your car.
We only say this because of a fascinating new study conducted by Scrap Car Comparison, a service that (wait for it) compares the going rates of scrap car buyers across the United Kingdom. This study was undertaken to answer one burning, crashing, sometimes exploding question: Which Hollywood star has been responsible for the highest number of cars destroyed onscreen? Conducting “hours of research” and munching their way through “more than a few tubs of popcorn,” the service’s crack team of researchers viewed more automotive mayhem than any person or group of people should really ever watch in a lifetime. In the end, they created their Top 10 list of stars who have crashed, smashed, bazooka-ed, or otherwise blown up the most vehicles in modern film history. That’s right: The actors in question didn’t even need to be behind the wheel, just directly involved in a car’s destruction (no fender benders or minor dings) to be counted.
Topping the list was Diesel, with a whopping 61 vehicles having met loud, sometimes fiery, almost always awesome ends due to his onscreen activities. As you might have guessed, he earned that spot by virtue of his role as Dominic Toretto in the long-running Fast and Furious franchise. The study notes that in 2011’s Fast Five alone, ol’ Dom wrecked a mind-blowing 30 cars while dragging a huge vault through city streets in one of the craziest heists ever put to film. If Diesel had failed to wreck even a couple of cars in just one of those films, he would have lost the crown to an old hand who has been in the car-destroying game for roughly as long as the entire Fast and Furious cast put together.
Vin Diesel holds only a slight car-destroying lead over Bruce Willis
This would be Bruce Willis, who totally annihilated a cop car with a machine gun in Die Hard and has carried on his automotive vendetta ever since. According to the study, it’s not even that flick’s four sequels that inflated Willis’ total. He simply can’t seem to keep from obliterating multiple vehicles in every movie he’s in, from 1991’s Hudson Hawk to 2013’s RED and every role in between. Researchers concluded that across 17 films, Willis has been responsible for 60 cars biting the dust. (For those keeping score at home, that’s an average of about 3.53 cars per movie.) Coming in third is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who destroyed 13 vehicles in 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines alone and has totaled five cars or more in four additional films. His total (so far) stands at 52 cars in 14 films. Next up is Matt Damon, whose role as superspy Jason Bourne in four feature films has helped him amass a total of 35 destroyed cars.
Following Damon on the list is Keanu Reeves, whose roles in the John Wick franchise and in the 1994 action classic Speed contributed greatly to his total of 30 cars in six movies, followed by Tom Hardy, who surprisingly trashed more vehicles in 2018’s Venom than he did in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. His total is 29. Next up is Daniel Craig, whose involvement in the James Bond franchise pumped up his total to 24, followed by Nicolas Cage, who has only destroyed 22 cars onscreen in his career. (It just seems like a lot more, doesn’t it?) Bringing up the rear are Tom Cruise (with 19 vehicles destroyed) and Hobbs and Shaw themselves, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham, who tied for last place with 18.
This is obviously the kind of study the world needs a lot more of, and it’s given us a great idea: If ever there’s a movie made in which cars rise up to take over the world, just cast all of the above actors to handle the threat as an Avengers-style car-killing team. You’re welcome, Hollywood!
What do you know about Vin Diesel? We all know he’s the star of the “Fast and Furious” movies, not to mention the voice of Groot and a whole slew of other memorable characters like Riddick. He’s also been active as a producer and has a sizeable social media following. However, over the multiple decades that Diesel has had a presence on the worldwide pop culture scene, there’s still so much about the performer that isn’t common knowledge among the general public. These include the jobs that marked his earliest days of acting as well as a number of forays into forms of artistic expression beyond performing, such as directing or running a video game production house.
Diesel’s made it no secret that he has a major creative passion for any project he boards, whether it’s breakdancing or breaking into the world of music. That enthusiasm runs deep within the many little-discussed parts of Diesel’s life, which help paint a much richer picture of the man behind Dominic Toretto.
He started as a child actor in stage plays
Diesel’s love for the craft of acting was instilled in him at a young age. At the tender age of seven, Diesel debuted as a performer in the stage play “Dinosaur Door.” His original intentions, however, were somewhat different: According to ScoopWhoop, he and his brother broke into a theater hoping to wreck it in an act of rebellion. These plans were quickly foiled once they were caught by the venue’s artistic director, Crystal Field. Rather than sending Diesel and his accomplices away in cuffs, Field gave them all a chance to appear in “Dinosaur Door.” They gladly accepted and Diesel’s first foray into acting was cemented.
Little did Field or Diesel know that day that this was the first step in an acting career that would span decades and multiple billion-dollar worldwide hits. Iconic performers can come from anywhere, including vandals turned inadvertent actors in productions of “Dinosaur Door.”
He wrote and directed a 1995 short film called Multi-Facial
Vin Diesel is nowadays known as the face of the “Fast and Furious” franchise as well as the voice of Groot in a series of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. But when he first engaged in the art of cinema, Vin Diesel wasn’t just acting in smaller-scale fare, he was also working as a director. Though he hasn’t stepped behind the camera in over a decade, Diesel’s first notable project was the 1995 short film “Multi-Facial.”
Diesel also starred, penned the screenplay and composed the score, reflecting the intense passion he had for this endeavor. The 27-minute film was submitted to the Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered strong acclaim. It also paved the way for Diesel to direct the 1997 feature-length movie “Strays.” Though his first few projects showed that Diesel wanted to be a director, his career would end up focusing almost exclusively on being a leading man in movies that would be a far cry from his more grounded indie endeavors. While that career change has resulted in a number of memorable characters, it’s also a far cry from the more challenging, intimate dramas Diesel helmed early on.
