Marvel took a risk when it introduced Guardians of the Galaxy into the wider MCU, but it’s safe to say it paid off — literally. Just ask Vin Diesel‘s bank account.
In the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and his band of galactic outlaw friends universally won over audiences with their sarcasm, snark, and sibling squabbles, but none of them stole hearts quite as easily as Groot, the Flora colossus played by the Buff and the Furious Vin Diesel. The character’s trisyllable vocabulary consisted solely of “I am Groot” (or on one memorable occasion, “We are Groot”) but his evolution from adult to baby to adult again was one of the franchise’s most fulfilling.
It’s a dream job. You walk into work, sidle on up next to a microphone, and say “I am Groot” over and over again. Then, you walk away with a sizeable paycheck that would make most actors’ eyes water. Of course, Diesel also had to say his line in multiple languages, inflections, and octaves, but hey, it’s a solid gig no matter which way you spin it.
How many times has Vin Diesel played Groot?
Diesel voiced Groot in a total of seven Marvel movies and two seasons of his solo Disney Plus series: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Guardians of the Galaxy: Holiday Special (2022), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. (2023), and I Am Groot seasons 1 and 2 (2022 – 2023).
Originality can die a slow painful death when an actor is contracted to play the same character multiple times over for years on end, but luckily for Diesel, he had the rare opportunity of playing four different versions of the trisyllabic tree: Adult Groot, Baby Groot, Teenage Groot, and a Buff Young Man Groot.
Now before you suggest Diesel put hardly any work into the middle years of Groot’s life, James Gunn busted that myth when he revealed that Diesel’s voice was hardly modified in post-production for Baby Groot. Most of it is entirely Diesel. In speaking with Entertainment Weekly, he even doted on Diesel’s acting range.
“Listen, yeah, Vin’s an actor! One of the reasons I was interested in working with Vin is I like Vin’s early [work], when I first saw Vin come around in movies like Boiler Room. He’s a real actor! He’s become this sort of larger-than-life action figure. But he’s actually are a real actor who can do a lot of different things. I’d love to see him take on some more difficult roles in his career, because I think he’s more than capable of doing that.”
Vin Diesel’s salary for playing Groot
You’re probably familiar with the rumor that Vin Diesel was paid $54.5 million for voicing Groot across a majority of his MCU appearances. It turns out that that is categorically false, as proven by James Gunn who said the rumor was “not true” in a response to one fan’s incredulous post on X (formally known as Twitter).
For years, it was assumed Diesel made roughly $13 million per appearance as the Flora colossus (at least in the films), but if that’s not true, then how much did he actually make? The truth is we don’t know. The information is not public record. We can only estimate based on his co-workers’ alleged salaries and Diesel’s history of receiving hefty paychecks.
As of this writing, Diesel has a net worth of $225 million and has brought in more than $7 billion at the global box office thanks to both his Marvel films and his Fast and Furious ones. In 2017 alone he made $54 million. He’s also been reported to have made $20 million upfront for F9.
Taking all that into account, it’s not unreasonable to assume he made at least $13 million across all his appearances as Groot in both front-end and back-end deals. If anything, that feels conservative, especially given his star power and the nearly $2.5 million all three Guardians movies made at the global box office. He may not have made $54.5 million, but he’s not necessarily hurting for money, is he?
