Vin Diesel: How Kelly Ripa Helped Me Out Early in My Career
Diesel dishes on his old friend and how she helped him years ago.
— -- Vin Diesel opened up this morning on "Live with Kelly & Michael" when talking about his good friend Paul Walker, who died last year in a car crash.
The "Guardians of the Galaxy" star said that he grew up in the "bouncing world" and that he was used to losing people, but that his bond with Walker was much different.
"We grew up in the business together and became famous together ... he was my partner," Diesel, 47, said, admitting the subject of his death was "heavy."
Read: Vin Diesel Opens Up About 'Awkward and Uncomfortable' Filming Without Paul Walker
"They don’t teach you in acting how to mourn someone and simultaneously pretend they are in a scene with you," he said of finishing the latest "Fast & Furious" film without Walker, but his brothers, who stepped in to help after the actor's death. "It's one of the darker moments in my journey ... It was so sudden, so unexpected."
In fact, Diesel said that people don't realize the dangers of filming action movies like "Fast."
"You put your life on the line more than you should," he said. "When you go into these action sequences, you put yourself in harm’s way in kind of an unfair fashion."
Diesel told a story from the latest "Fast" set that while he was doing a stunt, he heard the stunt experts talking about 8 to 1.
"I said, 'What does 8 to 1 mean? Does it mean what I think it does?'" he added. "They said, '8 to 1 is the ratio that something could happen bad if you role a 1 ...That’s nothing just on Monday, I was doing a 4 to 1 stunt."
While Diesel said growing up and later working as a bouncer in New York had some dangers as well, there were good times too, one involving host Kelly Ripa.
"I've known Kelly long before she was hosting this show," Diesel revealed.
He said after bouncing for nine years, he convinced some club to let him throw a party, many, many years ago. He called his good friend Ripa, way before she was a talk show host, and invited her.
"I'm so fun at a party," she said.
"She tore the party up," Diesel added.
Looks like it was Ripa to the rescue.
They also watched a clip of Diesel from the 1980's where he had hair and was a street performer.
"Let me just tell you, you look so much better without hair," Ripa joked.