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It's the sixth installment of the high-octane action series, [The] Fast & the Furious,

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and once again Hollywood muscle man Vin Diesel takes on the character of hard-talking street racer and ex-con Dominic Toretto.

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It's a silver screen series that highlighted Diesel's strength in playing the tough guy role.

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And after the original raked in a cool 40 million [dollars] at the box office in its first weekend in 2001,

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The Fast & the Furious franchise sees Vin Diesel step firmly into the limelight to become one of Tinseltown's A-listers.

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This week on Talk Asia, we're in Seoul to catch up with Vin Diesel and find out who he really is.

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Thank you so much for spending a few minutes of your time. You have a very busy schedule. Congratulations on Fast & Furious 6.

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You've taken ownership over this franchise as well, producing these movies.

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What have you learned about the process and of dealing with studios in Hollywood?

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Being a producer allowed me to be more accountable for the overall picture.

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When you see Fast & Furious 6, you see that played out in its fullest, in the sense that all of our characters shine so well.

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That's a testament to wanting everyone in the cast to shine, wanting the director to be the best that he...

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I like walking away from a film and everyone in the film being applauded for doing their best work.

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When you directed... wrote, directed, produced your first short film, Multi-Facial,

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I remember watching it and seeing this guy, the character, Mike... this very open, very honest, very accessible, very real guy.

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This small short film that cost, what, $3,000 to make, lands in the lap of a really big-time Hollywood director.

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Tell me about that.

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Well, I had just come back from the Sundance Film Festival with Strays, and I thought that I would sell it then, and I didn't sell it.

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And then one Saturday morning, I get a call from my agent and she says, "You're not gonna believe this but Steven Spielberg saw your short film."

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I just started jumping up and down. And I remember I jumped on my bed. I was jumping up and down on my bed like a kid at Christmas.

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And the agent said, "Can you shut up for a second, Vin? I have more to tell you.

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He wants to write a role for you in Saving Private Ryan."

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How did that change you?

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How did it change me?

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It... I guess the fact that my colleagues... it really changed my colleagues, my colleagues had changed.

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It was no longer the thespian that would, you know, be rehearsing with me at the park, it was now Steven Spielberg.

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And he said, "You know, I want you to meet Tom." And I said, "Tom who?"

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And he started laughing, and said -- and looked at me, like, "You don't know what you're here for?"

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Kind of like, "Are you... do you know anything about this industry?" -- "Tom Hanks."

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And I said, "Oh!" and I was so... I felt so, at that moment, embarrassed, and he said, "No, no, no, that's a good thing. Don't lose that."

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He was speaking to keeping that New York integrity, or keeping that integrity, period.

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So I would go to the set early and I would talk to him and I would talk to him.

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I remember one day he said -- I was talking to him about something in the third act about Tom Hanks' character,

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and he looked at me with the most puzzled look on his face, like, this guy is crazy --

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"Vinny, you die in the first act. You're not even in the third act!"

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But he was so encouraging that when I wasn't shooting he even let me operate a 35-millimeter camera.

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You couldn't buy better education than that.

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I couldn't. I used to say all the time, and I would say to anybody, to take this advice.

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I would have brought him coffee every day and he didn't even... he wouldn't have had to pay me.

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That access to working professionals was what I was longing for.

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I just wanted to be around them. I just wanted to see what they do and learn from what they do.

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And because it was all foreign to me.

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If you could talk to your younger self, knowing what you know in those days when you thought maybe it's not gonna happen,

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what would you tell yourself?

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Play it cool. I'd say... I'd say, play it cool and learn as much as you can because everything you learn you're gonna need.

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You won't have enough time to learn. Everything is an education.