He's back, he's bad - and he's still bald

Bald is, literally, cool.

Vin Diesel returns his smooth pate to center screen today in "Fast & Furious," the fourth edition of the chase-and-crash street-racing series.

Diesel has tried, with limited success, to become a breakout kind of rebel movie star in the mold of another famous baldy, Bruce Willis of "Die Hard" and other action films. Diesel is returning to the "Fast" franchise as much out of need as out of choice. In doing so, he brings the conversation about bald heroes and anti-heroes to a head.

Of course, the champion chrome dome was Yul Brynner, who ruled Egypt in "The Ten Commandments" and got both the girl and an Oscar for "The King and I." Women clearly liked the look. It took no less than the parting of the Red Sea to trouble his reign in Egypt. When screen legend Ava Gardner was asked to list the men she would most like to be stranded with on a deserted island, Brynner was on her list (even though she never co-starred with him).

On the TV side, the champion is Telly Savalas, star of "Kojak." Savalas was a translator for the State Department before turning to acting and often visited Norfolk to see his friend Peter Decker, an attorney.

Savalas once told us about how worried his mother was that he most often played villains, such as the sadistic killer in "The Dirty Dozen." He described how thrilled she was when he called her to say he'd been cast in "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

"You'll be a wonderful Jesus," she beamed.

"But Mom, I'm cast as Pontius Pilate," he countered.

After a sad pause, she added, "Be kind, my son."

Bald and mean, however, go together very well. Few anti-heroes could match the menace and fury of Detective Vic Mackey in TV's "The Shield," as portrayed by Michael Chiklis.

Another bad man extraordinaire without hair is Samuel L. Jackson. He doesn't always go the full shaved-head route - in fact, he played Agent Gibbons with hair opposite Vin Diesel in "XXX" - but that was as a good guy. Check out his nasty bald turn in last year's "Lakeview Terrace."

Ben Kingsley has played bald both ways - evil baldy in "Sexy Beast" and saintly sans hair in "Gandhi."

And Patrick Stewart is the nobleman of shiny-headedness - both as Jean-Luc Picard, the captain of the Enterprise in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and as Professor Charles Xavier in the "X-Men "films.

It just goes to show you: Guys, if you haven't got it, flaunt it.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com