When the news started to emerge yesterday evening that actor Paul Walker was one of the two people to perish in a fiery one-car accident in Valencia, California earlier that day, many people initially suspected that it was nothing more than a gruesome Internet hoax that managed to gain some traction thanks to a slow news period. After all, considering that he was best known for starring in all but one installment of the durable "Fast and the Furious" franchise, a series of films that saw him in the middle of some of the most ridiculously overscaled automotive stunts ever committed to celluloid, the idea that he would perish in a car wreck at 40 seemed too dramatically neat to be credible. The news proved to be true, alas, and we are once again left to contemplate both a life and career cut short far too soon.
Born in 1973, Walker began working at a young age in commercials and soon graduated to appearances on such TV shows as "The Young & the Restless," "Charles in Charge" and "Who's the Boss." He eventually made his big-screen opposite Denise Richards in the immortal "Tammy & the T-Rex" (1994), playing a high schooler whose brain is transplanted into an audio-animatronic dinosaur. This is the kind of start that might have nipped most incipient careers in the bud; Walker persevered, and soon became a familiar face in such popular youth-oriented films as "Meet the Deedles" (1998), "The Skulls" (2000), and the back-to-back 1999 hits "Varsity Blues" and "She's All That."
In 2001, he co-starred in "The Fast & the Furious," a thriller about illegal drag racing that transcended its gearhead underpinnings to become not only one of the surprise hits of that year but the start of an enormously lucrative film franchise; its most recent installment, "Fast & Furious 6," become one of last summer's biggest hits. Although most of the discussion regarding the ongoing popularity of the series has focused on the elaborate action setpieces and the ethnically diverse cast, Walker, who appeared in all but one of the films (and was filming the seventh installment at the time of his death), was another key component to their success, thanks to his Everyman charm and his ability to provide a solid and dependable center for the craziness around him. Without his presence to serve as a counter-balance, the franchise might not have achieved such broad and long-lasting commercial acceptance.
Walker appeared in other movies, including "Joyride" (2001), "Timeline" (2003), "Into the Blue" and "Eight Below" (2006). Many of these were uneven at best, ridiculous at worst. But he occasionally found himself working with superior material and proved himself to be up to the task. One of his first notable film roles was as one of the residents of a sitcom world on the cusp of liberation in the acclaimed comedy-drama "Pleasantville" (1998). He later acquitted himself admirably amongst such heavy hitters as Susan Sarandon, Penelope Cruz and Alan Arkin in the little-seen holiday film "Noel" (2004) and Clint Eastwood cast him in "Flags of our Fathers" (2006), the American-centered half of his two-part exploration of the battle of Iwo Jima and its aftermath.
However, if I were to pick one film of his to seek out right away, it would have to be the jaw-dropping 2006 thriller "Running Scared," a film so determinedly demented from start to finish that even the most jaded of moviegoers—at least the ones who caught it during its sadly brief theatrical run—were agog at its excesses. Walker stars as a low-ranking mob thug charged with disposing of a gun that was used to shoot a corrupt cop during a drug deal gone bad. Before he can do so, a neighbor kid steals it to shoot his abusive father, and Walker has to track down both the kid and the gun, a search that leads to some of most lurid developments imaginable. As he did with the "Fast & the Furious" films, Walker provided a clear and relatable anchor for the madness around him. He reteamed with the film's writer-director, Wayne Kramer, for this year's "Pawn Shop Chronicles", and while the results weren't much to write home about, his performance as a drug-addled thug trying to pull himself together enough to pull off a robbery was one of its few highlights.
Unlike other young actors who take their early success as an excuse for public misbehavior, Walker was someone whose on-screen persona as a nice guy seemed to carry over into his real life as well. One never heard him getting into drunken brawls or scrapes with paparazzi. I interviewed him a few years ago under some of the worst circumstances imaginable: the film he was plugging was awful beyond measure, and he was in the throes of a particularly nasty stomach virus. Not only did he insist on going through with the interview, he proved an engaging subject. He dutifully sold what he was there to sell, but was far more animated when talking about his hopes to work on more ambitious material in the vein of "Pleasantville." Such opportunities may have occurred as often as he might have liked, but in Walker's best work, he demonstrated enough care for his craft to suggest that he was in it for the long haul.
Walker is survived by a daughter, Meadow Rain. Besides the still-in-production "Fast & Furious 7," he has two other films being readied for release. The first, "Hours," a drama in which he plays a father trying to rescue his prematurely-born daughter from a hospital under siege from Hurricane Katrina, is set for release on December 13. The second, "Brick Mansions," an English-language remake of the international action hit "District B13," is due to open sometime next year.
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