MSN Movies.com has the oppurtunity to get and intervieww ith “The Great ONE”, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. here are a few highlight:
We are the same age. I watched wrestling as a kid and then stopped when I got older. Then, I was flipping channels in the mid-to-late ’90s, came across one of your promos and loved it. Cracked me up. And it got me hooked back on wrestling.
Oh, that is so cool. What wrestling were you watching as a kid?
It was the ’80s, so WWF: Hulk Hogan and Iron Sheik stuff … Randy Savage, Ultimate Warrior, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, Rick Rude … all of it.
Wasn’t that GREAT back then? It was so much more fun. Absolutely just fun. It’s a lot different now.
I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about wrestling and The Rock stuff.
You should know, and I am very forthcoming about this: First of all, I love that business, because I grew up in it. My grandfather, my father, my whole family was in it [Note: Johnson was the first third-generation wrestling superstar, and many of his cousins were or currently are pro wrestlers.] And I wouldn’t be here right now without that. I think it is intriguing, because what happened was … OK, this is my 10th year in acting. Eight to ten years ago, when I was trying to make the transition, [wrestling] is not always the first thing you want to talk about. [Laughs] But now, since the transition happened and so much has happened, it is easy to talk about it now, especially since I have been retired five years.
When you made the switch from wrestling to acting, was that natural for you? I mean, you were cutting promos, you were in character as The Rock. You were essentially acting. Is it any different being on a movie set and playing different characters?
It is different in a lot of ways, but what is the same is slipping into character and finding a good performance. But the wrestling arena compared to movie set is different. Was I comfortable? I was very comfortable, because I am always 100 percent prepared. I came into acting in a very unconventional way. My parents were studio executives — I don’t come from a lineage of actors — so preparation, immersing myself in the process and surrounding myself with good actors was key. It was all so new.
