<\/p>\n
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson said Monday a “burning desire” to express himself as an actor led him to accept a role in “The Smashing Machine”, which was to premiere at the Venice Film Festival.<\/p>\n
Best known as a wrestler turned big-budget action film hero, the 53-year-old said he felt there was pressure in Hollywood where the “box office is loud”, and that can “push you into a category and into a corner”.<\/p>\n
“I understood that, and I made those movies, and I liked them, and they were fun, and some were really good and did well, and some not so,” said the “Fast and Furious” star, appearing at his first European festival.<\/p>\n
“I just had this burning desire and this voice that was saying ‘Well, what if? What if there is more and what if I can?’,” Johnson said about the challenge of stretching himself.<\/p>\n
On paper, the role in the “The Smashing Machine” was tailor-made. He plays wrestler Mark Kerr, a real-life former pioneering mixed martial-arts fighter at the beginning of this century.<\/p>\n
But Kerr — contrasting with many of Johnson’s previous roles — is a flawed and nuanced character.<\/p>\n
He is a gentle yet troubled man who battled addiction, and his explosive relationship with his ex-wife Dawn (played by Emily Blunt) forms the core of the two-hour feature by American director Benny Safdie.<\/p>\n
“The film isn’t about fighting. It’s a love story about Mark and Dawn and his relationship,” Johnson said, while also revealing he had had to bulk up for the role at Safdie’s request.<\/p>\n
While Johnson credited “best friend” Blunt for encouraging him to express himself, Blunt hailed Johnson’s performance.<\/p>\n
“One of the most extraordinary things was seeing him completely disappear, like spooky,” she told reporters.<\/p>\n
“I remember when you walked in as Mark for the first time. It changed the air in the room.”<\/p>\n
The duo had already acted together, in Disney-made “Jungle Cruise” in 2021.<\/p>\n
Kerr, who is also in Venice to promote the film, told AFP he was delighted with the outcome.<\/p>\n
“It’s almost impossible to describe just the amount of detail and everything that went into it,” the 56-year-old said.<\/p>\n
Asked about Johnson’s portrayal of him, he said: “I have a 20-year-old son who saw it and he could not believe it.”<\/p>\n
“The Smashing Machine” is one of 21 films vying for the top Golden Lion prize at Venice, which will be handed out on Saturday.<\/p>\n
adp\/ams\/rmb<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson said Monday a “burning desire” to express himself as an actor led him to accept a role in “The Smashing Machine”, which was to premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Best known as a wrestler turned big-budget action film hero, the 53-year-old said he felt there was pressure in Hollywood where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1991237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[326505,359816,305874,313617,344655,333428],"class_list":["post-1991236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-benny-safdie","tag-burning-desire","tag-dwayne-johnson","tag-emily-blunt","tag-mark-kerr","tag-venice-film-festival"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/The-Rock-looks-to-stretch-his-range-in-The-Smashing.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1991236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1991236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1991237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1991236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1991236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1991236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}