Steven Spielberg Thinks Vin Diesel Abandoned His True Calling as a Director

Vin Diesel’s Hollywood story didn’t start with muscle cars or talking trees. It started on a New York stage when he was seven years old, thanks to a strange twist of fate that pushed him into acting instead of trouble.

From that moment on, Diesel wasn’t just interested in performing, he was fascinated by storytelling itself, studying writing and filmmaking in college and carving out an early identity as a filmmaker with something to say.

That creative spark showed up quickly. After a brief role in Awakenings in 1990, Diesel took matters into his own hands. He wrote and directed the short film Multi-Facial in 1995, a personal project about identity and race.

Two years later, he followed it with Strays, a gritty character driven crime film that he also wrote, directed, and starred in. Both projects made the festival rounds and caught the attention of one very important filmmaker.

Steven Spielberg saw something special in Diesel. He was intrigued by Diesel as a filmmaker. That interest led to Diesel being cast in Saving Private Ryan, a role that became his true breakout and put him on Hollywood’s radar in a big way.

From there, things moved fast. He popped up in Boiler Room, became a genre favorite with Pitch Black, and then launched The Fast and the Furious, igniting a franchise that would dominate pop culture for decades.

Diesel went on to become a global star, anchoring the Fast & Furious saga and voicing Groot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But while his acting and producing career exploded, his work behind the camera stopped. He hasn’t directed a feature film since Strays, and that choice has weighed heavily on Spielberg.

In a 2020 interview with The National, Diesel admitted that stepping away from directing was a personal shortcoming and one that disappointed Spielberg. That disappointment wasn’t subtle or theoretical.

Spielberg said it directly to Diesel, and the words clearly stuck. Diesel shared the exchange, saying:

"Speaking of Steven Spielberg, I saw him recently, and he had said to me, 'When I wrote the role for you in 'Saving Private Ryan,' I was obviously employing the actor, but I was also secretly championing the director in you, and you have not directed enough.

“That is a crime of cinema and you must get back in the directing chair.' [...] I haven't directed enough."

Spielberg didn’t just cast Diesel for who he was at the time. He believed Diesel would grow into a filmmaker who would contribute meaningfully to the art form, not just the box office.

That path became complicated once Fast & Furious turned into a billion dollar juggernaut. Diesel didn’t just star in those films. He became a producer and a business architect, helping steer a franchise that prints money.

Outside of that world and Marvel, his projects leaned heavily into blockbuster territory with films like Bloodshot, the XXX series, and Babylon A.D., which didn’t exactly earn critical love. His only directing work since Strays was a short Fast & Furious tie in released in 2009.

Still, Diesel hasn’t abandoned his ambitions. He’s spoken openly about wanting to direct an epic series of historical war films centered on Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who challenged Rome during the Second Punic War.

He began scouting locations back in the early 2000s and even floated the idea of starting with an animated prequel. None of it has materialized in the last twenty years, but the passion is still there.

Spielberg’s frustration comes from seeing untapped potential, not failure. Diesel became one of the biggest stars on the planet, but to Spielberg, that was never the end goal.

I would actually love to see Diesel return to directing. We’ll just have to wait and see if it happens one day.