Somehow, this always gets overlooked. Apologies if you're one of the people who noticed him, and are wondering why we're pointing it out, but many people have no idea that the 'Fast and Furious' and 'XXX' action movie star was in 'Saving Private Ryan', even though they saw him with their own eyes!
To be fair to those who didn't recognize him, he does look dramatically different in the film to the way we know him now. He was young, and it was only the third film role of his career. Spielberg had seen him in his second film, 'Multi-Facial', which he'd written, produced and starred in himself. The performance made an impression on the director, who offered him a small part as Private Caparzo in his war epic. Diesel was paid a total of $100,000 for his role. That's nothing compared to the big money he gets from his major franchises now, but we're sure it was helpful to a young actor at the start of his career.