Dwayne Johnson’s career best performance in the upcoming film The Smashing Machine has the ex-pro wrestler earning serious Oscar buzz ahead of the 2026 awards.
The 53-year-old actor, whose career has mostly been geared towards larger-than-life action roles and some family friendly comedies, underwent a dramatic transformation both physically and mentally to play UFC Hall of Famer Mark Kerr in the biopic about his life. The Smashing Machine, which opens nationwide on Oct. 3, has already racked up some award wins with Benny Safdie taking home the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival where the movie premiered.
While he’s never been considered a heavyweight when it comes to his dramatic acting, Johnson has received overwhelmingly positive reactions for playing Kerr — a hulking savage in the ring but a gentle giant outside — while dealing with a period of time during his career when he was struggling badly with drug addiction.
“[Johnson] stands at the precipice of a career-defining moment, and one he has sought for quite some time,” Variety’s Clayton Davis wrote about his performance in the film.
“Comparisons to Mickey Rourke’s Oscar-nominated turn in Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler (2008) are inevitable and apt. Both films center on fighters grappling with physical deterioration and personal demons. Where Rourke drew from his boxing background, Johnson taps into something rawer and psychologically complex. Working with two-time Oscar winner Kazu Hiro (“Bombshell” and “Darkest Hour”), Johnson undergoes a physical transformation that erases any thought of a WWE star in costume. In fact, he could even position himself as this year’s Brendan Fraser, whose makeup-assisted turn in The Whale earned both acting and technical Oscars, likewise for an actor who was thought of as an unlikely awards contender.”
Johnson long considered The Smashing Machine as his passion project after he saw the 2002 documentary of the same name and he learned more about the former wrestler turned fighter. It took him many years to finally get the project off the ground but now The Smashing Machine is about to debut with A24 — an independent studio with a huge amount of Academy Award wins — backing the film.
While it’s impossible to hide Johnson in any film — being a 6-foot-5 muscle bound giant will do that for you — he’s effectively disguised behind the prosthetics that turn him into Kerr for the movie.
It doesn’t hurt that Johnson spends a huge part of the film acting opposite Emily Blunt, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Oppenheimer.
The result has been a career defining role for Johnson, who was brought to tears after a 15-minute standing ovation following the film’s debut in Venice.
“Johnson has rarely played a loser, but he’s always been likable, displaying a massive grin to match his massive pecs in action vehicles that never allowed him to showcase much range,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Jordan Mintzer wrote about the movie. “He manages to go deep here without overdoing it, killing the audience with kindness as a benign warrior who suffers from one scene to the next, triumphing briefly in the ring before succumbing to addiction and/or romantic grief.
“Like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler — a film from which Safdie seems to take a few cues — the actor delivers an intoxicating mix of blood, sweat, tears, protein and total helplessness.”
Gold Derby, a site that provides odds for all major entertainment awards, currently has Johnson as one of the top five performers most likely to earn a Best Actor nomination at the 2026 Academy Awards alongside names like Timothee Chalamet, Jeremy Allen White, Michael B. Jordan and past winner Brendan Fraser.
“Johnson is an ideal match for Safdie and the material, bridging without sensation or cloying affect the disconnect between who Mark is in the octagon (intimidating, undefeated, all primal machismo energy) and who he is outside the cage (wounded, insecure, cauliflower-eared),” IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio said about the film. “All of that is to say while Smashing Machine doesn’t play like easy awards catnip, Johnson earns a sizable position among this year’s prize-seekers.”
Academy Award nominations won’t be announced until early 2026 but all signs are pointing towards Johnson getting serious consideration along with Safdie as Best Director as well as the potential for Best Screenplay, Kazu Hiro getting consideration for makeup and Blunt’s consideration for Best Supporting Actress.
More reactions to Johnson’s performance start pouring in after the Oct. 3 release of The Smashing Machine but it appears the former WWE superstar might be poised for a chance to add an Oscar to his resume come 2026.
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