The Rock: Wrestling And Hollywood Conformed To My Authenticity And Allowed Me To Be Me

The Rock is unquestionably one of the top draws in wrestling history and has since become one of the top draws in Hollywood. 

Starting out as the always smiling Rocky Maivia, The Rock struggled early in his career until he turned heel and became The Rock as part of the Nation of Domination. In Hollywood, The Rock tried to move away from his wrestling persona and did more Disney movies before becoming the top action star. 

In a feature by Citizen Abels, The Rock recalled how he wasn’t comfortable in his own skin as he started in wrestling and Hollywood. 

“I felt least comfortable in my own skin on two occasions. When I first started as a professional wrestler, I was told back then, that you can’t smile enough, you have to be happy every time you go out there. You have to be so joyous at the opportunity that you have. I wasn’t reacting authentically and I was being a very buttoned-down version of who I actually was at that time in the world of professional wrestling,” he said.

Rock continued by saying, “The other time that happened to me was when I made the transition to Hollywood. At that time, a few years into my Hollywood career, approximately the mid-2000s, I was told then that I had to lose weight, I had to change my eating habits and diet. I couldn’t go to the gym as much and had to slim down. I had to not reference the name The Rock, I had to do, as best I could, to not mention or reference the world I came from, the world I was proud to come from, in professional wrestling. At that time, when there is no blueprint for somebody who looked like me, walked and talked like me, half-black, half-Samoan. ‘You can’t be big, you can’t go to the gym you can’t call yourself The Rock, let’s not talk about pro wrestling.’ You buy into that shit, as I did, until, one of two things is going to happen; you either continue down that road and you’re miserable, and eventually your career is probably going to fizzle out and you don’t have any sense of longevity or equality. The other thing that (could) happen is you’re going to say, ‘fuck this shit, I’m gonna be me, and we’re gonna see what happens.’ In that authenticity moment of clarity, a funny thing happened in the world of pro wrestling and Hollywood, both industries conformed to my authenticity and allowed me to be me. That’s when things changed.”

The Rock still keeps tabs on the world of wrestling, recently commenting on the Hell in a Cell bout between Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins. 

The Rock is set to star in Black Adam, which will be released on October 21, 2022. 

If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.