Paul walker family

Actor Paul Walker, who has died at the age of 40 in a car crash in California, was a Hollywood heartthrob and action hero. At the heart of the high-octane drama in five out of the six films was Paul Walker, who played Brian O'Conner. Walker was brought up as a Mormon near Los Angeles and it was his parents who pushed him into modelling and acting.

When his mother, a model, started taking him to her photoshoots as a toddler, he ended up getting more work than she did. The young Walker went on to appear in adverts throughout his time in elementary school. His father was not in showbusiness - he was a sewer contractor. Walker's real passion, though, was surfing.

Paul walker date of birth

That led him to study as a marine biologist at college, but he soon dropped out to pursue a life of, as he once put it, "smoking and living out of a garage". The acting world called once more when his former agent looked him up to ask him to audition for a role as a surfer in the CBS spiritual drama Touched By An Angel. A week later, he got a small part in the time-travel caper movie Pleasantville, which starred Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon.

His roles gradually got bigger as he appeared in films like Varsity Blues, playing a high school football star; She's All That, a lightweight teen love story; and The Skulls, about a murky secret society on an Ivy League college campus. The Skulls was produced by Neal Moritz and directed by Rob Cohen, who told him he reminded them of a young Steve McQueen and encouraged him to take his acting more seriously.

So when Moritz and Cohen came to cast their next film, set in the underground street racing scene of Southern California, they turned to Walker. Walker recalled: "Neal Moritz called me [on the] opening night screaming, 'It's a cultural phenomenon!

Paul walker siblings

When Vin Diesel bowed out of the sequel after a pay dispute, Walker moved centre stage. This time, his character used his street-racing abilities to bust a Miami money-laundering cartel. The franchise looked set to be short-lived when Walker sat out the third instalment.