The 'Furious 7' actor reveals on 'Today' show that he chose Pauline as the name of his third child to keep his friend's memory alive.
- March 23, 2015
AceShowbiz -
Vin Diesel keeps Paul Walker's memory alive in his family. The actor names his newborn daughter after his late "Fast and Furious" co-star. "I named her Pauline," he revealed to Natalie Morales during an appearance on "Today" show.
"He was in the room," an emotional Diesel said. "There's no other person that I was thinking about as I was cutting this umbilical cord. I just ... I knew he was there... It felt like, you know, a way to keep his memory a part of my family and a part of my world."
Pauline is Vin Diesel's third child with longtime girlfriend, Mexican model Paloma Jimenez. The baby joins big brother Vincent Sinclair, 4, and sister Hania Riley, 6.
Diesel credited Walker, who was a father to teen daughter Meadow, for helping him embrace parenthood. "He was an important part of my transition into fatherhood," he wrote on Facebook in November.
"He was a part of so much in my life ... long personal talks with my mother or babysitting the Alpha Angel ... he took a certain pride in being Uncle Pablo," Diesel said of his late pal. "After all, we were filming a scene in FF4 the day [Hania] was born, and he being the only one I told, encouraged me to go in and cut the umbilical cord."
Paul Walker's final movie, "Furious 7", opens April 3 in North America. "This was a labor of love," Diesel couldn't contain his tears as he told fans at SXSW during the premiere. "It was in some ways the hardest movie I ever had to do because the relationships that you see on film are so real. When the tragedy happened, I lost my best friend. I lost my brother."
