Best Known As: The clean-cut cop from The Fast and the Furious
Blue-eyed hunk Paul Walker was Vin Diesel's co-star in the 2001 action movie The Fast and the Furious, and the star of the sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003). An actor and model since childhood, Walker has worked steadily since his teen years in television and film, including a stint on the soap opera The Young and the Restless. In the late 1990s Walker was all over the place, appearing in Pleasantville (1998, starring Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire), Varsity Blues (1999, with James Van Der Beek), She's All That (1999, with Freddie Prinze, Jr.) and The Skulls (2000). With the box office success of The Fast and the Furious and its sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), Walker proved himself as a bankable leading man. He played a mobster in the creepy Running Scared (2006), among other films, and re-teamed with Diesel for a 2009 sequel, Fast & Furious.
Walker sat out a 2006 sequel, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Diesel sat out both that film and the earlier 2 Fast 2 Furious.
Career Highlights: The Fast and the Furious, She's All That, Joy Ride
First Major Screen Credit: Programmed to Kill (1986)
Biography
With looks suggesting a closet full of football trophies, the blond, blue-eyed Paul Walker has made a name for himself with a number of high-profile projects, including the successful teen flicks She's All That and Varsity Blues.
Hailing from Glendale, CA, where he was born on September 12, 1973, Walker got his start at a young age, modeling and acting in various TV shows including Charles in Charge, Diff'rent Strokes, and Who's the Boss. His film debut came in the 1986 horror spoof Monster in the Closet, which complemented a part in the short-lived 1986 sitcom Throb. After high school, where he was active in a variety of sports, Walker opted to study marine biology at a series of California community colleges. Realizing his real love was acting, Walker resumed his long-dormant career in 1993, with a role on the CBS soap The Young and the Restless. This was followed by a lead role in Tammy and the T-Rex, which also starred an unknown Denise Richards. In 1998, after starring in the desultory Meet the Deedles, Walker won a secondary role as the object of Reese Witherspoon's pent-up passion in the critically acclaimed Pleasantville. His onscreen success continued with the following year's She's All That and Varsity Blues, both of which allowed the actor to capitalize on the craze for teens on the screen. In 2001, Walker tackled a leading role as he put the pedal to the metal with burgeoning star Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious. A throwback to the forgotten drive-in exploitationers of the past, adrenalized and pumped-up for the new millennium, The Fast and the Furious brought Walker into edgier thriller territory as a youthful undercover FBI agent drawn into the world of underground racing gangs. Taking to the road once again, Walker appeared later that year as a teen stalked by a maniacal trucker while on the way to pick-up his dream girl (Leelee Sobieski) in Joy Ride.
In 2003, Walker reprised his Fast and the Furious role for the sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious, before signing on to appear alongside Penelope Cruiz, Susan Sarandon, and Alan Arkin for veteran actor Chazz Palminteri's big screen directorial debut, the ensemble drama Noel. The low-key movie provided a fore into films of a more subdued, dramatic nature, but the young actor wouldn't stay away from the thriller genre for long. In 2005 he appeared with Jessica Alba in the underwater adventure Into the Blue, and by 2006 he starred in the crime drama Running Scared.
Walker kept the adrenaline pumping but widened his target audience for his next film, the Disney feature Eight Below. Walker starred as an Antarctic explorer who is forced to leave his beloved sled dogs behind when his life is in danger, but remains determined to rescue them. The movie was more family friendly than his other recent efforts, but before long he would be back to the grown-up fare that seemed to suit him. He next took a role in the John Herzfeld action flick The Death and Life of Bobby Z, in which he played opposite Laurence Fishburne as a convict who agrees to pose as a deceased drug dealer during a hostage switch. The edgy crime film was right up his alley, but Walker would change gears again for his next film, playing one of the six soldiers who raised the American flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima during WWII, in the Clint Eastwood movie Flags of Our Fathers.
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Walker's most recent feature films are crime thrillerRunning Scared and Walt Disney Pictures' Eight Below, both released in 2006. Eight Below garnered critical-acclaim and opened in first place at the box office, grossing over US$20 million during its first weekend.[9] During the filming of Running Scared, director Wayne Kramer stated that, "[Walker] is that guy on some level "[10] when comparing Walker with his character in the movie, Joey Gazelle. Kramer continued on to say that he "loved working with [Walker] because as a director he’s completely supportive of my vision of what the film is. And even better, he’s completely game for it."[10]
Walker starred in the independent film The Lazarus Project which was released on DVD on October 21, 2008. He subsequently returned to The Fast and the Furiousfranchise, reprising his role in Fast & Furious, which was released on April 3, 2009.[11]
Walker, who was named as one of People's Most Beautiful People in 2001,[13] currently resides in Santa Barbara, California, with his dog, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever.[2][14] His daughter, Meadow Rain[3] (born in 1999), lives [15] with her mother, a former girlfriend of Walker's. He is an avid surfer and enjoys the beach. Walker is a purple belt in Brazilan Jiujitsu under Paragon Jiujitsu,[16] and is also a big car enthusiast.
Walker's first love was marine biology, with his idol being Jacques Cousteau[17], and he joined the Board of Directors of The Billfish Foundation in 2006. [18] He recently fulfilled a lifelong dream by starring in a National Geographic documentary about great white sharks, which aired on November 16, 2009. [19][20] He spent 11 days as part of the crew, catching and tagging 7 great whites off the coast of Mexico.[17] The expedition, led by Chris Fischer, gathers measurements and DNA samples, and places satellite tags on the sharks to increase knowledge about shark movements in the oceans. [21]
