Dwayne Johnson is already getting a lot of praise for his performance in The Smashing Machine. It’s quite a long way from any sort of performance that we’ve seen from him, a serious and dramatic portrayal of former UFC fighter Mark Kerr. However, while it might be the most challenging role of his career, he says it was also a part that he completely understood.
Mark Kerr was a UFC champion, and Dwayne Johnson became a WWE champion, but the thing that truly connected the two, as the actor tells EW, is the idea of fighting and failing to achieve dreams. The Rock said…
I have been waiting for this opportunity to challenge myself in ways that I'd not been challenged before, to really just rip myself open as an actor. What I was able to connect with in Mark is when you want something so badly and you'll do anything to get it, but the thing you want so badly just doesn't happen. That happened for me: I thought I was going to be a professional football player, going to the NFL.
Dwayne Johnson played football for the University of Miami and would go on to play in the Canadian Football League for a few years, but he never achieved his NFL dream. This was at least in part due to a shoulder injury he received in his freshman year of college.
Johnson had put a lot of significant expectations on himself. An NFL career was going to be the thing that changed things for both him and his family. He admits that when that success didn’t come, he went through some emotional difficulties. He continued…
That was going to be the thing that was going to allow me to buy my parents their first home, since we lived in trailer parks and apartments. When it comes to that kind of stuff, you get one shot, and that never happened for me. I had to move back in with my parents at 22 or 23, and I was just spiraling at that time.
Having a dream of buying your parents a house, only to have to move back in with them after the dream fails, would certainly be a blow, and it sounds like Johnson had some real struggles following that. While he would certainly go on to success anyway, The Rock says he used those feelings while portraying Kerr. He also credits his co-star and friend, Emily Blunt, who plays Kerr’s girlfriend, for helping him work through the feelings. Johnson said…
I finally had a place to put all this, because I'm not really a therapy kind of guy. And so you also have to have somebody who you trust in these scenes, and there was no one I trust more than Emily. We all dove in, and the experience changed my life.
Processing one's feelings, however it's done, is certainly a good thing, and it sounds like Johnson now feels like he’s in a better place personally, having made The Smashing Machine. While he has found incredible success and has been called the most popular actor in the world before, it seems he still hadn't fully overcome those old feelings.
Dwayne Johnson clearly challenged himself with The Smashing Machine, not just by taking on a rare dramatic role, but in being willing to explore his own vulnerabilities.
You'll be able to see this performance when The Smashing Machine premieres on the 2025 movie schedule on October 3.
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