When the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press met Dwayne Johnson in 2002 to talk about his film debut in The Scorpion King, he still went by the nickname of The Rock.
“The Rock is one of the nicknames I got from the WWF (World Wrestling Federation), and Brahma Bull comes from a tattoo that I have of a bull, which has become as symbolic and iconic of my character as The Rock because I have always liked bulls and I am a Taurus.”
“In professional wrestling, everything is choreographed. In our industry we have scripts, producers, and directors, we block out our matches, our fights, well in advance of the day. That’s how I trust the guys that I’m in the ring with and I try to protect them as best I can, that is where learning to fall comes into play. I always tell people that when I lose it’s phony and when I win it’s the real thing.”
“In wrestling the live crowd is extraordinary, it’s an intangible that is hard to describe and there is nothing greater than that. On the other hand, the luxury of doing film is that you can express a wider array of emotions. But I would say that both are difficult and they parallel each other in a lot of ways.”
“This movie was definitely a dream come true for me because acting was something that I have always wanted to do for a long time and to finally have my own starring vehicle, me being the principal actor, was amazing.”
“I am lucky that I have a mentality that it is always easier to stay in shape than to get in shape. To be in wrestling and working in a different city every night, the demands are pretty strenuous, so I committed myself to working out every day, and especially for the film because there was so much of showing my body. So, I try and stay away from fried foods and fast foods, to get the right amount of protein, like chicken breasts, steak, and fish, I eat baked potatoes, vegetables, and things like that. Once a week I have a cheat day where I will eat anything, like a Burger King. Then after the film, I had to treat myself to pizza and doughnuts.”
“I’ve always been a big fan of film. The very first films I fell in love with, in a span of three years when I was eight years old, were Rocky, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Star Wars.”
“The comparisons to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have been great and very humbling to me. I have become friends with Arnold and he has been extremely supportive. He and Stallone are in positions where they don’t have to be supportive of me, and far too often I see guys trying to come up, while the guys at the top are trying to push them down. Those two guys have been the exception, they haven’t been like that.”