Watch Old-School Vin Diesel Breakdance Back in the '80s

Before Vin Diesel was the super-popular captain of the Fast and Furious franchise, the 47-year-old star was a struggling writer/director who made his own short films. And before that, as you can see above, he was a young, aspiring breakdancer who starred in long-forgotten hip hop videos in the 1980s.

A very, very skinny Diesel — presumably operating then by his birth name, Mark Sinclair — slinks his way through what seems to be a very early instructional video, shot in front of a graffitied wall built inside a TV studio. The video shows him performing some basic moves before busting a backside worm at the end, showing the kind of flexibility that probably eludes him now that he lifts gigantic weights (and then posts videos of him doing so on Facebook).

The video has been floating around the internet for a bunch of years now (it just resurfaced on Reddit), and was forced to watch the clip last year on Live With Kelly and Michael, where he explained that he used to breakdance in NYC locales such was Washington Square Park and Columbus Circle.

“People know that I was a bouncer, and the real reason I started bouncing was that I loved to dance,” he told the hosts. “I would dance for free in nightclubs and that’s why I wanted to be a dancer. And the only time I ever got in trouble as a dancer was when I was dancing.”