10 Modern Action Film Stars Who Failed To Meet Their Potential

2. Vin Diesel

Based on his name alone, Vin Diesel was always destined to become an action star. After a brief appearance in Saving Private Ryan and a voice role as the title character in The Iron Giant, Diesel made his mainstream breakthrough thanks to charismatic turns in well-received B-movies Pitch Black and The Fast and the Furious. Following this up with the $277.5m hit xXx, the actor was poised to become Hollywood's biggest action hero. However, over the last decade Diesel has found little success outside of his signature role of Dominic Toretto. Revenge thriller A Man Apart and family 'comedy' The Pacifier were both critically panned, although the latter made over $150m at the box office, while The Chronicles of Riddick failed to even earn back the $120m budget. A rare dramatic turn came in Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty, before Babylon A.D offered yet another disappointing would-be blockbuster. With the exception of his voice role as Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vin Diesel hasn't played a character other than Riddick or Dominic Toretto since 2008. Although his involvement in the Fast and Furious series positions him as the star and producer of one of Hollywood's biggest franchises, this strict adherence to his signature roles sees the actor failing to fulfill his early promise of becoming one of the industry's biggest action stars, and he seems all-too-comfortable to stick to what he knows.