After 20 years of Vin Diesel playing Dominic Toretto in the Fast & Furious franchise, another actor finally came along to tackle the role. The New Romantic actor Vinnie Bennett was tapped to play a younger Dom for F9’s flashback scenes, giving audiences a better idea of what the character was like before his father died, and how that loss shaped him into the man we met in 2001’s The Fast and the Furious. So because Bennett was playing a younger version of a Vin Diesel character, naturally he knows the secret to doing a good Diesel impersonation.
Vinnie Bennett passed along this information to CinemaBlend’s own Law Sharma during the F9 home media junket, and luckily for the folks out there whose voices aren’t nearly as deep as Vin Diesel’s, Bennett’s advice isn’t about vocals. It’s all about head placement, with the actor saying:
What I noticed when I was playing around with it is a lot of it depends on posture. So the more you position your head back…
As you’ll see watching the above video, Vinnie Bennett tilting his head back does actually give off a Vin Diesel vibe without even doing the voice. Granted, Bennett has a leg up on most people with his own deep voice, but the next time you find ourself wanting to do a Vin Diesel impression, tilt your head back to give it a boost. It also couldn’t hurt to shave your head, but only do that if you’re willing to truly commit.
While F9 also saw Vin Diesel’s own son, Vincent Sinclair, briefly playing an even younger Dominic Toretto, it was Vinnie Bennett’s version we primarily spent time with in the latest Fast & Furious movie’s flashbacks. Along with showing specifically how Jack Toretto (played by J.D. Pardo) died in that race in 1989 after hearing about it back in The Fast and the Furious, these flashbacks also revealed how Dom and his brother Jakob (played by John Cena as an adult and Finn Cole as a teenager) became estranged and provided a peek at Dom’s stint in prison, where he met future crew members Tego Leo and Rico Santos.
With approximately a decade between where we leave off with the younger Dominic Toretto in F9 and where we find him in The Fast and the Furious, it’s possible that Vinnie Bennett could return for more flashbacks in Fast & Furious 10 and/or Fast & Furious 11. With these being the final entries in the main film series, it’s possible they’ll be the last time we see Dom, so it might be nice to learn more about his past before he became a street-racing thief and eventual world saver. Naturally we’ll let you know if it’s confirmed if Bennett will return to the Fast & Furious franchise.
For now, what we can say with certainty is that Fast & Furious 10 will race into theaters on April 7, 2023. If you’re wondering what movies will play on the silver screen sooner than that, scan through our 2021 release schedule and 2022 release schedule.
