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When Dwayne Johnson<\/a> broke down in uncontrollable sobs during a 15-minute standing ovation at the Venice International Film Festival, it became more than an emotional premiere moment for the wrestler-turned-actor. It signaled the potential birth of one of the unlikeliest Oscar contenders in recent memory, as his transformative turn in Benny Safdie<\/a>\u2019s moving \u201cThe Smashing Machine<\/a>\u201d could reshape how Hollywood views one of its most bankable stars.<\/p>\n Johnson<\/a>\u2019s plays former amateur wrestler and Mma fighter Mark Kerr<\/a> in A24<\/a>\u2019s emotionally devastating drama, representing the kind of career pivot that Academy voters have historically embraced, and one the cinematic world may be excited to watch unfold. With Safdie taking home Silver Lion for directing at Venice, the buzz is growing louder surrounding Johnson\u2019s vulnerable turn as the troubled athlete. Now, bowing at the Toronto Film Festival,…<\/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.imdb.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Rock as an Oscar nominee? It\u2019s time to get used to the idea. When Dwayne Johnson broke down in uncontrollable sobs during a 15-minute standing ovation at the Venice International Film Festival, it became more than an emotional premiere moment for the wrestler-turned-actor. It signaled the potential birth of one of the unlikeliest Oscar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2007845,"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":[25173],"tags":[25538,31714,21751,22556,21993,22860,21912,21738,24141,22205,21913],"class_list":["post-2007844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-actors","tag-actresses","tag-celebrities","tag-directors","tag-films","tag-hollywood","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-stars","tag-television","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Yes-Dwayne-\u2018The-Rock-Johnson-Is-a-Serious-Oscar-Contender.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007844","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=2007844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2007844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2007845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2007844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2007844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2007844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}