Vin Diesel Opens Up About Paul Walker: "Guardians Of The Galaxy" Role Was "Therapeutic"

Vin Diesel has claimed that “Guardians of the Galaxy” helped him to get over the death of his close friend and co-star, Paul Walker. Before you ask, Diesel didn’t turn to religion, “Guardians of the Galaxy” is not a new branch of scientology, it’s his upcoming Marvel superheroes movie.

Vin Diesel has said that working on "Guardians of the Galaxy" helped him deal with the death of Paul Walker

Diesel, who voices extraterrestrial tree-like being Groot in the film, explained on a Facebook Q&A that the role allowed him to work through his pain: “It was very personal - it was the month after my brother Paul Walker and it was the first time I had worked since…Although it was challenging, just to get back to work was therapeutic - especially as Groot. There was an innocence about the character that was just refreshing - and it may have been more challenging under other circumstances, but at that time, it was very therapeutic.”

Walker died in a car crash in November, 2013. The pair had been friends since meeting on the set of their movie "The Fast and the Furious" in 2001 and had been filming "Fast & Furious 7" together at the time of Walker’s death.

Before you start thinking that learning lots of long, eloquent soliloquies for the role is what really helped Diesel to cope, Groop only says three words, over and over: “I am Groop.” Facebook fans asked Diesel to estimate how many times he thought he had repeated the words, “Oh god,” he wrote, “maybe a thousand? I don’t know. It felt like a thousand. [The director] James Gunn and I were having so much with it. So it could’ve been a thousand. And it was amazing to go in there and to work with someone who wanted to explore the character - we wanted each ‘I am Groot’ to mean something different…It reminded me, as an actor, how much we can do with so little - and if we’re passionate about it, good thing can come from it.”

Diesel and Walker met when they filmed "The Fast and the Furious" together in 2001

Diesel also let fans know that the first person he told he had got the role was his son. Diesel wrote, “He was so excited. Marvel and James Gunn had sent over a large envelope of conceptual art and there was a bit two-page image of the whole cast, and I asked my three-year-old, ‘Which character do you think they want Daddy to play?’ And he pointed to the tree! And that’s how I knew that this was a special role.”

“Guardians of the Galaxy” is due to be released on August 1. Watch the trailer for it right here.