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LOS ANGELES, March 18 (UPI) -- Vin Diesel honored late actor Paul Walker in a speech this week. The 47-year-old actor remembered his former co-star at an advance screening of Furious 7 on Monday. Diesel attended the event hours after welcoming his third child with girlfriend Paloma Jimenez, and told the audience filming the sequel was difficult.
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"This was a labor of love," he said of the seventh franchise installment. "It was, in some ways, the hardest movie I've 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."
Diesel and Walker debuted as Dominic Toretto and Brian O'Conner in The Fast and the Furious (2001), and went on to star in three and five sequels, respectively. Walker died in a car accident at age 40 in November 2013, and Furious 7 will mark his last appearance on film.
Furious 7 opens in theaters April 3, and co-stars Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Jordana Brewster. Diesel last voiced Groot in Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy, and is also scheduled for The Last Witch Hunter with Rose Leslie.
