Dwayne Johnson ‘The Rock’ is a very popular actor, who has starred in big and blockbuster films, but for some time he wondered if there wasn’t something more. He found it in his role in ‘The Smashing Machine’, a film by Benny Safdie, presented this Friday at the Venice competition.
“I had a voice, a burning desire, to see what else I could do because sometimes you don’t know what you’re capable of when you’re pigeonholed” until “people who love you and respect you like Emily (Blunt) and Benny, tell you, ‘you can create something else,'” the actor explained at a press conference in Venice.
Because, he reflected, “when you’re in Hollywood, it’s all about the box office” and while he acknowledged that he enjoyed making the films that have made him the star he is today, for years he looked around him and wondered if he was going to live his dreams or someone else’s. “Now I live my dreams and do what I love,” he said.
He was referring to his role in ‘The Sashing Machine,’ a film in which he plays a wrestling star in the 1990s, Mike Kerr, at a time when wrestling had neither the following nor the importance it has today.
It was at the end of that time that Johnson became popular precisely in wrestling, before making the leap to acting. And he met Kerr when he was starting out – “he was the hero for all of us”.
But for him, the film is not about the fight, even though it’s very present in the story. “It’s really a love story between Mark and Dawn (played by Blunt) and Mark with the fight” and it’s about being lucky to be alive and about the transformation of a relationship.
It was that more intimate part that Johson really wanted to be involved in, who recalled that he comes from a family of professional wrestlers.
“I know what it’s like to see the woman you love sacrifice her own life and dreams, for a Mark or for my father. That’s what Emily represents in the film. Usually you don’t talk about women and girlfriends in that world,” the actor noted.
Dwayne Johnson ‘The Rock’ touches with his story
He also spoke movingly of his father, who was a wrestler and was homeless as a child. Despite everything, “his capacity to love was immense” and that inspired him to play Kerr, whom he described as “tender and kind”.
For his part, Blunt stressed the importance of everything that went on behind the success part of the fighter, of what it means to be with a man who is dedicated to the sport.
To prepare for her character, she met with Dawn, “who was very generous with her story, with me, with the context of that time, the regrets, the outbursts of anger, the nature of the relationship and the deep love and devotion they had for each other in an impossible environment.”
A role very different from any she had played before, she acknowledged, because it offered her a “fuller spectrum of what a relationship really is,” including the ups and downs.
“It was exciting to work with Benny’s visceral way of filming, so spontaneous,” added the actress.
A world, the world of fighting, at a certain time, that attracted the director a lot because of its contrasts. “All the martial arts competed with each other, it was a small and closed community, everyone knew and loved each other, there was a lot of relationship between them, which was a contradiction to the world of fighting, it was something precious that I wanted to delve into,” reported Agencia EFE.
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