Rock in role
Playing Hercules is a boyhood dream come true for wrestler-actor Dwayne Johnson
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, but Dwayne Johnson might disagree. Back when Johnson was making the transition from wrestler The Rock to actor, he pitched a Hercules movie for his cinematic launch. But it was rejected.
Almost two decades later, Johnson finally plays the famous film demigod in a blockbuster action flick directed by Brett Ratner.
“Back then, I didn’t have the clout to get Hercules made,” the 42-year-old says.
He does have it now, after a series of movie successes since his introduction as The Scorpion King in 2001’s The Mummy Returns.
The latest swords-andsandals Hercules epic, loosely based on the graphic comic series Hercules: The Thracian Wars, features Johnson’s muscle-bound hero confronting an evil warlord.
British actors Ian McShane, John Hurt, Joseph Fiennes and Rufus Sewell co-star. But it is the all-American Johnson leading the way.
“They’re all treasures,” says Johnson of his supporting cast.
“One of the things that was important to me was showcasing and honouring the actors I had around me. It was so gratifying to be a part of this.”
That’s even if he had to play through the hurt during filming. Six weeks before Hercules was to begin its shoot in Bucharest, Romania, Johnson injured himself in a Wrestle-Mania match.
“I tore two tendons from my pelvis,” he says. Surgery to correct the injury would have put him out of action for a year, “and I didn’t want to cancel (Hercules)” so he soldiered on (but ended up having three surgeries to repair hernia damage anyway).
In the end, Johnson had filming delayed for two weeks to recover from the hernia operations and then tolerated the tendon pain even while managing his Hercules stunts with few grimaces or days missed.
“I did ask Brett (Ratner) not to do too many takes,” he says, chuckling at his only demand. Talk about suffering for your pop art.
Johnson was too young to remember the cornball 1950s and 1960s Hercules flicks of Steve Reeves and others. But he does have a youthful connection to one of the bodybuilder guys who graced the big screen. (Most recently, Twilight’s Kellan Lutz played Hercules in last winter’s The Legend of Hercules.)
“My personal connection to Hercules was hardcore gym life in the 1970s,” says Johnson — who, as a boy, would accompany his Canadian pro wrestler dad Rocky Johnson to his workouts.
“On the walls they’d have the pictures of the people who played Hercules — but the Steve Reeves one always stuck with me because he was breaking his chains from the pillars.”
Whether Johnson will return for another Hercules adventure is up to moviegoers, but he has plenty on the go.
Fast & Furious 7 will shift into theatres next spring. And he’s currently filming the rescue action movie San Andreas as he negotiates for a return to the family fantasy series with Journey 3: From the Earth to the Moon.
In other words, this Rock keeps rolling along, energetic and enthusiastic after 18 years in the movie game. “I still approach every day of filming like it’s my first day on the job,” he says.
Shooting Hercules, when he was feeling a little weary, Johnson would remember what Christopher Walken had told him on the set of The Rundown (2003).
“He said, ‘I love acting because I love the fact you can always get better at it,’ and that always motivates me.”