Dwayne Johnson’s stage name, The Rock, was first crafted in the gladiatorial arenas of the World Wrestling Entertainment and then adopted for his various on-screen projects. For years, his physique mirrored this name; everything about him was huge, strong and seemingly ageless. No wonder Disney cast him as the voice of a demigod in “Moana.” He practically is one in real life.
All of this made Johnson’s appearance on the film festival circuit in September to promote his artsy new movie “The Smashing Machine,” which disappointed this past weekend with a career-worst $5.9 million box office opening, even more shocking. He looked dramatically skinnier than his WWE appearances back in March, reportedly losing a significant amount of muscle mass. The old Rock was still there — but there was much less of him. “The Rock has turned into a pebble,” one X user scoffed.
The muscle loss has a specific purpose: After stating that he’d gained 30 pounds for his role as UFC hall of famer Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine,” Johnson, 53, is now rapidly shedding weight for his next role as a “whimsical, eccentric 70-something year-old” called Chicken Man in “Lizard Music,” his follow-up collaboration to working with “Smashing Machine” director Benny Safdie. “I’m so excited to get a chance to hopefully transform again like I was able to do in ‘Smashing Machine,’” Johnson said at TIFF. “[It means] eating less chicken.”
The dramatic body transformation is a recognition that the superhero physiques that made actors like Johnson bankable in tentpole films eventually limits the roles they can play, especially on the dramatic front. He’s strategically slimming down (and perhaps getting healthier in the process), as part of a calculated pivot from action roles to more serious parts.
It’s also an acknowledgement that muscle-laden action stars have trouble withstanding the test of time. Holding on to extreme muscle mass gets harder as former wrestlers age into their 50s, while simultaneously getting them further away from the dramatic fare that brings awards recognition and long-term career sustainability.
Johnson is not alone. Last year at TIFF, fellow wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista made headlines as he also showed up to the premiere of “The Last Showgirl” having lost roughly 75 pounds.
As both men try to evolve their careers past their franchise origins, the larger-than-life physiques that launched both their careers must be altered. It’s time for the demigods to become human.
“This is a classic case of what happens when Hollywood muscle meets real-world limitations,” Anthony Hughes, an attorney-turned-bodybuilder featured in the documentary “Enhanced,” told TheWrap. He believes The Rock’s sudden, drastic weight loss “is almost certainly tied to changing or discontinuing his performance enhancing drug regimen — not just a change in diet or exercise.”
Reps for Johnson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Johnson has previously denied using performance enhancing drugs while acknowledging that he briefly experimented with them as a teenager. In a 2009 MTV interview, Johnson admitted: “I tried it. Me and my buddies tried it back in the day when I was 18 or 19. Didn’t know what we were doing.”
Johnson attributes his physique to training and diet while pushing back against what he calls unfounded speculation. “Sure, you get a lot of people out there who will suspect, and say s–t. They want to negate the hard work you put in,” Johnson previously told Fortune Magazine.
Now, in contrast to the musclebound stars of the ’80s and ’90s who refused to get off the action train, Johnson is trying to evolve for the next phase of his career.
A career re-invention
At the Miu Miu Women’s Tales event in Venice in late August, the 53-year-old actor wore a loose-fitting satin shirt (Prada, of course) and baggy black dress pants as he showed off his new look, far removed from his ornately muscular appearance in movies like 2015’s “Furious 7,” his two “Jumanji” movies (from 2017 and 2019), 2023’s “Black Adam” and, indeed, the movie he was in Venice to promote: A24’s potential awards contender “The Smashing Machine.”
At the Venice premiere of “The Smashing Machine,” Johnson got emotional following a 15-minute standing ovation and told the New York Times: “A lot of times, it’s harder for us — or at least for me — sometimes to know what you’re capable of when you’ve been pigeonholed.”
Yet this narrative sits uneasily with Johnson’s track record. For the past decade, the entertainer has been quite the paycheck player and became known as “franchise viagra” as he parlayed his brand into huge paydays across dozens of studio tentpoles, from the “Fast & Furious” franchise to “Jungle Cruise” to last year’s “Red One.” As TheWrap first reported, Johnson even tried to use “Black Adam” as the vehicle to take over the entire DC Universe.
“The confusing thing about his ‘pigeonholed’ remark is that it completely contradicts his self-proclaimed narrative over the last decade-plus that he’s the one calling the shots on his entire career,” a studio executive told TheWrap.
Now Johnson is attempting to rebrand himself as a serious dramatic actor, complete with awards season-friendly glasses. Even as “The Smashing Machine” failed to resonate at the box office, Johnson said he would continue to pursue more challenging roles.
“In our storytelling world, you can’t control box office results — but what I realized you can control is your performance, and your commitment to completely disappear and go elsewhere. And I will always run to that opportunity,” the “Black Adam” star said.
But will audiences — and awards voters — buy it? Johnson, notably, won’t be leaving blockbusters completely behind, with the live-action “Moana” in theaters next year and another “Jumanji” movie going into production this fall.
The physical transformation serves this career repositioning, but experts note the practical realities behind such significant physical changes. “Most fans don’t realize that the kind of muscle and vascular fullness The Rock displayed in his peak is not sustainable naturally, especially for men in their 50s,” Hughes said. “You don’t drop 60 pounds of pure size at 53 unless something major changes in your chemistry.”
Hughes added that “maintaining that kind of look requires advanced protocols: testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), anabolic steroids [‘gear’], and a laundry list of supporting compounds and peptides.”
He told TheWrap what happens to the body when steroid users go “off cycle” as dosages are lowered or discontinued outright. “When someone like The Rock goes ‘off cycle’ — meaning he stops or dramatically lowers his PEDs — the body rapidly sheds muscle mass, size and that dense ‘superhero’ look,” he said. “This isn’t simply water weight — it’s the result of lower anabolic hormones in the system, lost muscle glycogen, suppressed protein synthesis and a rebound in body fat distribution.”
Jay Campbell, author of “The Testosterone Optimization Therapy Bible,” added that Johnson’s muscle loss is likely a result of coming “off higher dose androgens and anabolics.”
Back in June, Johnson revealed that doctors believed he had arterial plaque buildup in his circumflex artery and his recent pivot toward more dramatic parts suggests he might be done with the kind of action hero fare that launched him into superstardom, even if his latest, by all accounts Oscar-worthy role still has him buffed up in astronomical ways mere mortals can only dream about achieving.
The business case is compelling: trading physical spectacle for dramatic range opens doors to prestige projects, awards recognition and career longevity beyond the action hero expiration date.
Beyond superhero films
Prior to Johnson, Dave Bautista wrote the playbook for the “big-time former wrestler-turned-serious actor” body transformation. The 55-year-old WWE champion has systematically shed his wrestling physique, dropping from 370 pounds to 240 pounds — “probably the lightest I’ve been since I was 19 years old,” Bautista previously told YouTuber Chris Van Vliet.
Bautista’s most dramatic weight loss came after bulking up to 315 pounds for his 2023 role in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Knock at the Cabin.” “The director asked me, ‘I don’t want you to look like a powerlifter, I just want you to look like a great big guy,’” Bautista said. “It took me forever to shed it off. And then I noticed, the more I trimmed down the better I felt. And I also noticed the more I trimmed down the better I looked on camera. The better I looked next to other actors.”
Bautista’s pivot away from Drax, his Marvel superhero he played for nearly a decade throughout Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies and beyond, is part of a longer-term strategy to reposition himself as a serious dramatic actor.
“I’m so grateful for Drax. I love him,” he previously said in a GQ interview. “But there’s a relief [that it’s over]. It wasn’t all pleasant. It was hard playing that role. The makeup process was beating me down. And I just don’t know if I want Drax to be my legacy — it’s a silly performance, and I want to do more dramatic stuff.”
Bautista’s gamble paid off. He sought to work with top directors with supporting turns in Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049” and “Dune” and Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion.” Other recent movies like “The Last Showgirl” have proven his range and versatility.
However, not everyone sees Bautista’s transformation as a career game-changer. “I couldn’t tell the difference. Either way, he’s still a big guy,” a top talent agent told TheWrap.
Despite dropping weight, Bautista acknowledges his large frame still creates challenges in Hollywood: “At 6’4”, 240lbs next to your typical actor, I look like a gorilla. And it’s distracting. So, I’ll probably lose a few more pounds,” he said.
Ironically, Bautista previously said he sees his career trajectory as being the polar opposite of Johnson’s.
“I never wanted to be the next Rock,” Bautista told GQ in January 2023. “I just want to be a good f–king actor. A respected actor.”
The transformation playbook
An action star going through a dramatic body transformation isn’t new. Look at Sylvester Stallone.
Stallone was desperate to play the lead in James Mangold’s quiet drama “Cop Land,” about a small town in New Jersey where New York cops go to retire – leading to a place where loyalties are tested and secrets are concealed. In order to get the role, Stallone lost the muscles that made him such a bankable star the decade before, and packed on the pounds. His body had to suggest someone who had been weaned, for decades, on a steady diet of sugary donuts and black coffee.
It was an attempt to get away from the invincible action star that defined his career, and a necessary pivot. If you can’t look great with your shirt off as you eclipse middle-age, you might as well disappear into a character and share scenes with Ray Liotta, Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, which is exactly what Stallone did for “Cop Land.” Even though Stallone earned rave reviews and the movie made a solid profit ($63.7 million on a $15 million budget), he didn’t get the Academy Award nomination he was clearly after. And less than a decade later, he was beefed up again and returning to bulkier roles like 2006’s “Rocky Balboa” and, especially, 2008’s “Rambo.”
Other actors of his generation, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme, failed to transition from action features to more respectable roles. They are forever trapped, pec bulging, in the amber of a specific cinematic era. (Schwarzenegger, however, did become California governor for seven years.)
Channing Tatum also recently underwent massive weight loss for his starring role in Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman,” noting that he lost around 70 pounds (from about 240 to 172 pounds) to portray real-life fugitive Jeffrey Manchester.
Tatum ballooned up to 240 pounds to star in another indie called “Josephine,” but for “Roofman,” the actor wanted to get lean to play Manchester. Tatum shared his before and after on Instagram.
“I had only planned to get down to 185. And then once I was already going, and just the days of shooting, it kept coming off, and I got down to like 172,” Tatum said.
Johnson is on a similar path as he continues to slim down for “Lizard Music.”
“I still have a long way to go,” Johnson said.
While he was referring to his weight loss, he might as well have been talking about his aspirations for career longevity.
Drew Taylor contributed to this report.
