It has been many years since the actor of Fast and Furious’s Connor O’Brien, Paul Walker, passed away. It ended when he was leaving a charity event with a friend in a Porsche 918 spider… A notoriously difficult-to-drive vehicle. Before his death, he was a beloved actor, and ever since then, he has become an icon for people who like Japanese cars or just car people in general. Even though he is gone he is still inspiring a new generation of automotive fanatics and to this day there are still countless posts in remembrance of him in our feeds on November 30th, the anniversary of his death.
With all this in mind, how well do we really know him? Paul Walker wasn’t just a surfer dude from California who became an actor. It turns out he lived a pretty rich and fulfilling life and really left an impact on the people who knew him most. Unlike a lot of stars, he can actually say that he has been selfless and he has truly maintained a respectable state of humility. From when we first saw him driving the Mitsubishi Eclipse on the big screen, to the day he was remembered in Furious 7, driving off in an Mk4 Supra… This was everything that happened and everything you should know about the late Paul Walker.
10 He Was Acting Since Age 2
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Paul William Walker the IV was born to Paul Walker the III and Cheryl Walker in 1974. When he was just two years old his mom tried out with him for a commercial and he got the part. It wasn’t any local commercial, it was an official Pampers Diapers commercial filmed in 1976 that aired nationally.
Both he and his mom get a respectable amount of screen time, and you can watch him smiling on the ad on YouTube (He's the first kid). As exciting as this is, it wasn’t necessarily what gave him his start in his acting career. In high school he discovered his own love for acting and continued to pursue it professionally, continuing to do a few small roles as a child and building up. He would land many jobs that built his portfolio before officially becoming Connor O’Brian a good many years later.
9 His Dad Didn’t Give Him His Passion For Driving
Even though he shares his name, Paul the IV didn’t get any inspiration for cars from his dad. In fact when Paul Walker the IV was born, Paul Senior sold his motorcycles, a favorite pastime of his wife's and his. He knew they were very dangerous and didn’t want to raise his kids around fast cars or motorcycles after having lost several colleagues to accidents.
So how did Paul Walker get into cars? It started with his grandpa. William Walker was a Pearl Harbor survivor and navy middleweight boxing champion. As you might imagine, he was into motorcycles, cars, and trucks. As you also might imagine he was an inspiration to Paul and would often talk shop with Paul. He lived nearby and the two would spend a considerable amount of time together.
8 His First Cars Were Pickup Trucks
As Paul became interested in cars and began driving, the first vehicles he tinkered with and drove around in were pickup trucks. this was thanks to his grandpa again. It would be a while before he would be turned on to anything without a truck bed behind it, but it was enough to spark his interest in anything with four wheels.
Because of this origin, the Fast and Furious character portrayed by Paul Walker starts off driving a pickup truck. Of course… It’s not just any pickup truck but the rare and legendary 500 hp Ford Lightning. True to the 90s era, it had a cool font scribbling the shop name, a cover for the undercover cop he played. Nevertheless, that truck has since become an icon and of the four that Craig Lieberman planned to use on set, all were sold at auctions.
7 He Was Raised Mormon
Paul’s parents raised him in their Christian denomination that’s known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, given the nickname “Mormon,” for their Bible - adjacent scripture known as the Book of Mormon. While there is nothing to state that Paul ever outright rejected the religion he was raised in, he did later go on to identify as merely a general Christian and believer of God. Despite not necessarily living in the standard of the Church he remained fairly religious, and it would clearly influence his lifestyle.
Paul Walker in an interview states, “The people I don’t understand are atheists. I go surfing and snowboarding, and I’m always around nature. I look at everything and think, ‘who couldn’t believe there’s a God? Is all this a mistake?’ It just blows me away.” It’s possible to attribute his upbringing in the Mormon church to what turned out to be a very charitable and selfless life, thanks to the general good-naturedness of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints people, but we will get to that in a second.
6 He Loved Surfing And Marine Biology
As we just mentioned, Paul Walker loved to surf. He was raised less than an hour from the beach and at any chance, he got he would head down and hit the waves. He also would take up snowboarding anytime he got the chance. He even attributes his passion for acting to the fact that he was getting paid for these roles which enabled him to surf more. Growing up in California and being so close to the ocean, it’s only natural that he also developed a fascination for marine biology…
As a matter of fact, before he became an actor he was considering becoming a marine biologist. That’s what he was studying and what he was interested in before he realized he had a knack for this acting thing and, again, it could cover the cost of surfing better than any old job as a marine biologist. His interest in sea life continued his entire life.
5 Had Breakout Films Before The Fast And The Furious
To start off his acting career, Paul got into it very young. When just 11 years old he acted in Highway to Heaven, a TV series starring the dad from Little House on the Prairie: Michael Landon. Even though the show ran for a long time, Paul was only in it for three episodes as two different characters strangely enough. Immediately after that, he acted like a kid in a cheesy sci-fi horror movie before getting his breakout role as the son, Jeremy Beatty in the sitcom known as Throb.
From there it was all downhill: Charles in Charge, Who's the Boss?, What a Bummy, The Young and The Restless, The Boys Are Back, Tammy and The T-Rex… And so many more. Finally in 2001 after an endless back-to-back career in many LA films, he landed his role in The Fast and the Furious almost by chance. One of his previous directors, Rob Cohen, with whom he had become fairly close, told him that he had the opportunity to play an undercover cop in a car-based movie with high-speed driving scenes. Paul relates that he was so excited by the idea that he couldn’t say no.
4 He Owned Some Of The Cars In Fast And Furious
After The Fast and the Furious, Paul became infatuated with cars and went on to own some very impressive ones including a Nissan GT-R Skyline (R34) which typically would have been illegal in the U.S.. He messed around with a lot of vehicles from BMWs to Mustangs. He became enthralled with German cars before becoming a fan of Japanese and sticking with it. The point was made in the original Fast and Furious that he was a Japanese car fan despite his counterpart, Dominic Toretto being an American “domestic“ car guy through and through.
After the first Fast and Furious and from all his other films, Paul had some money to spare, so when he came across the R34 Skyline that was 100% legal in the United States (despite the 25-year import law), he snatched it up. The car was one of the very few that had been legalized by a company that specialized in shipping cars over part-by-part and building them in the United States to circumvent this stupid law. He happily volunteered his vehicle for 2 Fast 2 Furious. In the scene where he jumps over the bridge he really did bust off his front bumper, and the car had to be taken out to be repaired before they could continue shooting.
3 He Founded Reach Out Worldwide (ROWW) Charity
When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, Paul Walker was one of the first to respond. He maxed out the credit card to buy the supplies necessary and flew there himself as soon as physically possible. He and some of his friends immediately began passing out supplies. From the experience, the ROWW was founded. Unlike some charities by celebrities, this wasn’t some big front or a show for attention, and his actions proved this. For one, he was doing charity work in real life, trying to dodge the limelight and do some real good.
ROWW was exclusively funded by Paul Walker from his acting paychecks, no outside donors were involved. He did this because he was afraid, and rightfully so, that there were many charities that would use his money poorly or be wasteful before being able to do any actual good for the intended cause, thus ROWW was the solution. ROWW also remains free of government grants which often had stipulations on how the money can be spent, and it would restrict the organization. During his whole career, he tried to stay out of the limelight and remain a down-to-earth guy who only spoke to the media when he was contractually obligated to do so.
2 He Got A Lot of Speeding Tickets
As you might imagine, and as you may have gathered from witnessing his car collection... and watching the Fast and Furious series… Paul Walker loved to drive fast. During one five-year span, he got five speeding tickets and even though it’s not public record, the running theory is that he had seven total, five more than the average Californian gets in their entire lifetime.
Of course, this is even more shocking in California where the police are notoriously stretched thin and unresponsive to most speeders. Paul would deny that he was any sort of "method actor," buying into his role as Connor O’Brien. Rather, he was just a thrill-seeker, plain and simple. The fact was, Paul liked cars, he had fun cars, and he enjoyed driving them to their full extent, just like we would.
1 He Passed Away in a Porsche Carrera GT
In 2013 at 40 years old, just a few days off of filming the seventh Fast and Furious movie (Furious 7), Paul Walker was riding with his friend, Roger Rodas, from a charity event for Reach Out Worldwide. They were traveling 94 mph in a 45 mph zone. The 2005 Carrera GT owned by Rodas was a car that was notoriously impossible to control at high speeds on the road as it was designed for the track.
Roger Rodas was the one driving when they crashed. It was because of a combination of bad tires that needed a replacement, an over-powered car with 603 hp that only weighs 3,000 pounds, and road conditions that simply weren’t made for a car going that fast. Both died in the crash, and while none of the blame was necessarily put on Roger Rodas, some of the Walker family moved to sue Porsche, a claim that would later be dismissed by a judge in 2016. His brothers and CGI were able to fill in for his final appearance in the Fast and Furious films in a heart-wrenching moment where he and Dominic Toretto drive one last time. His character remains alive but not shown in the Fast and Furious franchise to honor his life, and to this day Reach Out Worldwide charity continues to thrive and benefit people's lives. You could say he really left a great legacy in his short time on Earth.