| Subject: |
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City & Shore Magazine (DJ on June issue) |
| Name: |
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annette |
| Date Posted: |
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May 25, 08 - 6:39 PM |
| Email: |
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annetteaaa@yahoo.com |
| Website: |
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 http://dwaynejohnsontherock.tripod.com |
| Message: |
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PEOPLE: ROCK STEADY
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's rise from the wrestling mat to the red carpet.
By Deborah Wilker
He’s had more nicknames than P. Diddy and about as many careers. Not that it matters. Hollywood can smell what The Rock is cooking, and lately it’s money – lots of it.
After careers in football and pro wrestling and with hit-and-miss turns in both commercial and offbeat films, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – (aka, The Rock, Rocky Maiva, Flex Cavana, The Brahma Bull, need we go on?) – had spent much of the last seven years inching up the Hollywood food-chain with steadfast perseverance.
But when his modest 2007 Disney comedy The Game Plan earned more than $130 million, and another $40 million more recently in DVD rentals and sales, Johnson suddenly found himself in entirely different territory.
No sooner had he sorted through an all-new stack of scripts and offers, than an invitation to the showbiz Super Bowl landed on his desk.
“It was a surreal moment,” he says of the limo ride that brought him to The Academy Awards on Feb. 24. “You’re in a line of cars, all getting ready to pull up. You have to wait your turn, so you have a lot of time to think. I remember I was just incredibly grateful.”
A few weeks later, speaking from the set of his next Disney epic, Race To Witch Mountain, he’s had additional time to reflect, and says he can still just barely believe he wandered the red carpet with the likes of George Clooney and Daniel Day-Lewis, “people I’d admired for years, but never met until now.”
Of course it works no other way in L.A. Deliver the box office – particularly when your film was a bargain to make and exceeds expectations – and the world is yours.
“Every actor I think dreams of some day going to The Oscars – whether you’re presenting, nominated or certainly winning,” he says. “It’s exhilarating. But when I graduated from the University of Miami in 1995, presenting an Academy Award was not the first goal that I had in mind.”
For a troubled kid who had racked up nine arrests before he was 17, the fact that he even made it to UM at all – let alone the multiplex – is something of a miracle. “I had the help of some great teachers when I first started to turn my life around,” he says.
After college the initial goal was pro football, but the NFL did not call. He joined the Canadian Football League, but the same nagging injuries that had sidelined him at UM (he was ultimately Warren Sapp’s back-up), led to his being cut from the Calgary Stampede within weeks of his arrival.
Johnson then followed his father and grandfather into the family business – professional wrestling – where he quickly became a breakout star, and just a few years later hitched a ride to mainstream entertainment.
After a surprisingly assured turn hosting Saturday Night Live and a small role in 2001’s The Mummy Returns, Universal executives gifted him with his own slice of The Mummy franchise – the title role in 2002’s The Scorpion King.
Just recently he helped Universal Studios Florida in Orlando cut the opening-day ribbon on a new thrill attraction “Disaster! A Major Motion Picture Ride,” which was created entirely around Johnson’s action hero personae.
Still, he hesitates to box himself into that corner and continues to play up his looks, likeability, even his singing voice, with roles against type. In 2005 he earned good reviews as a gay bodyguard in the Get Shorty sequel, Be Cool. And he’ll resurface June 20 in the theatrical remake of the classic ‘60s TV comedy Get Smart, opposite Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway.
Though he’s on location more and more these days, Johnson continues to base himself and extended family from the Fort Lauderdale area, and give generously to local causes, primarily charities for children. Free time is spent fresh-water fishing, working out with his longtime personal trainer, and “just relaxing” at home with family.
With four more movies either underway or in production – one of which is a comedy, Tooth Fairy, in which he’ll dress up and wave a magic wand – his Hollywood plate is about as varied as it gets.
His business partner in all this moneymaking continues to be soon-to-be ex-wife Dany Garcia, a financial executive whom he met at UM and was separated from last year.
The two continue to live nearby one another and are raising their six-year-old daughter together. In 2006 they donated $2 million to the University of Miami, followed by another $1 million last year to help renovate the school’s football facilities – the largest donation ever to the athletic department by a former student athlete. The Hurricanes’ new locker room will be named after him.
“Being gracious with your success and understanding your losses – I attribute so much of that to my time at the University of Miami, and the coaches and many professors,” he s |
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