Meet Vin Diesel's Competition

Jason Statham — star of the just-released thrill ride The Transporter — isn't surprised that people are comparing him to another recently-discovered action hero: Vin Diesel. But the British toughie is hard-pressed to draw a parallel that's anything but skin deep. "It's probably the short haircut and the rough voice," he tells TV Guide Online of his similarities to the XXX hunk. "[But] I think that's where it ends."

One major difference between the two well-muscled butt-kickers: Statham doesn't like to parade around naked in his films. Of course, the 35-year-old hottie will make an exception if the flesh baring is integral to a particular scene — as it was for The Transporter's spectacularly inventive oil slick sequence. To take on a slew of bad guys at once, Statham's alter ego — an ex-Special Forces operator-turned mercenary courier — traps the thugs in a sea of petroleum.

"I had to take my shirt off and I wasn't happy about that," he recalls of the soon-to-be-famous battle. "But it had to happen [so that] when they try and grab you, they slip away." Laughing, he adds: "I'm going to get ribbed [about the nudity] when I get back home." (With that body? Fat chance, dude.)

Statham — best known for his roles in such Guy Ritchie films as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch — next appears opposite Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton and Charlize Theron in a remake of the 1969 heist drama The Italian Job. With his career taking off, surely he's going to soon be sporting a little of that Vin ego, right? Not likely. "I come from nowhere and I'm not sure [I won't] go back," he says. "But if I can stop it, I will."