{"id":2044497,"date":"2025-09-23T19:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T19:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2044497"},"modified":"2025-09-23T19:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T19:50:08","slug":"dwayne-johnson-addresses-how-weight-loss-is-impacting-his-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/dwayne-johnson-addresses-how-weight-loss-is-impacting-his-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Dwayne Johnson addresses how weight loss is impacting his career"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n

Dwayne Johnson is breaking out from his usual roles and embracing a whole near era of acting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Known for movies<\/a> like Jumanji, Moana, Black Adam,<\/em> the Fast & Furious <\/em>franchise, Johnson<\/a> has starred in dozens of films over the course of his career \u2014 but there’s often a common denominator in the roles that he’s played previously, that being that he’s practically playing himself.<\/p>\n

This was far from the case for The Smashing Machine<\/em> however, Johnson’s latest project which is set to hit cinemas on October 3.<\/p>\n

In the highly anticipated movie, Johnson plays former wrestler and MMA<\/a> veteran Mark Kerr. While Johnson bares some similarities to the UFC<\/a> legend, he had to wear prosthetics in the film and it makes him practically unrecognizable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His transformation went further than the make-up chair though and Johnson was tasked with gaining 30 pounds in a bid for to make his physique resemble that of Kerr’s at the request of The Smashing Machine<\/em> director Benny Safdie.<\/p>\n

Chatting to UNILAD about the moment he knew he had to ask Johnson to put more weight on, Safdie said: “I was like, how do I ask Dwayne to get bigger? There’s a quality to Mark’s muscles that are just like, puffier. Then it was it was a long period of time [that it took to achieve] because that’s not easy muscle to put on, you know, that’s really difficult to do.”<\/p>\n

Safdie, who is best known for directing Uncut Gems<\/em><\/a> as well as starring in the likes of Oppenheimer<\/em> and Licorice Pizza, <\/em>went on to brand Johnson’s transformation into Kerr as ‘insane’.<\/p>\n

Safdie and Johnson are collaborating again for another movie titled Lizard Music, <\/em>which is based on the book of the same name by Daniel Pinkwater.<\/p>\n

For this role Johnson has once again tasked himself with transforming into his character and has already shed a significant amount of weight for his role as a 70-year-old man.<\/p>\n

But why is Johnson losing so much weight in a new look that’s left some fans concerned<\/a> instead of taking on less difficult roles or simply relying on CGI to make him appear different?<\/p>\n

\n
\"Dwayne<\/div>\n

Dwayne Johnson and Benny Safdie are working together on another movie (Isaiah Trickey\/FilmMagic)<\/cite><\/div>\n

The answer is that he wants to ‘immerse’ himself into his characters and ‘disappear’.<\/p>\n

Discussing his weight gain and subsequent weight loss, Johnson told UNILAD: “I gained 30 pounds for to play Mark Kerr and then came back down after that to my normal weight of 250 or so.<\/p>\n

“I’m in the process of slimming down now where I play a 70-year-old man, so the slimming down is happening.”<\/p>\n

He continued: “We have time to do it, which is really nice. There’s nothing extreme about it.<\/p>\n

“I can’t wait because, again, it’s the opportunity to completely immerse myself and disappear.”<\/p>\n

As to how his transformations are impacting his acting career, Johnson said that it’s allowing him to leave his ‘comfort zone’ by taking on movies like The Smashing Machine<\/em> and Lizard Music.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Johnson<\/div>\n

Johnson now wants to ‘disappear’ into his acting roles (A24)<\/cite><\/div>\n

“I felt like I was ready to just break out and rip and tear it all away of any expectation or infrastructure,” he shared of this, “and I felt like Benny came along and we came into each other’s lives at the same time. It’s his time to rip it all away and go be him.”<\/p>\n

Johnson added: “It’s a new side to access and explore, but it’s been there the whole time. I just haven’t put myself in a position where I could do it. I felt like it converged in the way that it did.<\/p>\n

“I had this little voice in behind my rib cage saying, ‘Hey, you can do more. There is more.'”<\/p>\n

THE SMASHING MACHINE <\/em>opens in theaters in the US and UK on October 3. <\/strong><\/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.unilad.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dwayne Johnson is breaking out from his usual roles and embracing a whole near era of acting. Known for movies like Jumanji, Moana, Black Adam, the Fast & Furious franchise, Johnson has starred in dozens of films over the course of his career \u2014 but there’s often a common denominator in the roles that he’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"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":[25177],"tags":[22367,305874,21741,378757,22860,21738],"class_list":["post-2044497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-celebrity","tag-dwayne-johnson","tag-entertainment","tag-film-and-tv","tag-hollywood","tag-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044497","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=2044497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2044497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2044497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2044497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}