From The Rock to The Pebble.
Dwayne Johnson shocked fans with his slimmed-down physique at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend.
The wrestler-turned-actor, 53, transformed his body to play MMA fighter Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie’s film “The Smashing Machine,” which is premiering in Venice Monday night.
Johnson showed off his weight and muscle loss as he attended the Miu Miu Women’s Tales event on Saturday night in a button-up blue shirt and black pants. He was joined by his co-star, Emily Blunt.
Then on Monday, Johnson wore a short-sleeved blue shirt that he tucked into his white pants at the film’s photocall.
Johnson’s skinny physique went viral on X where fans jokingly called him “The Pebble.”
“He’s so lean,” one fan wrote.
“Damn, he’s half of what he was!” another user said.
“Wow nice transformation,” a different person wrote.
In “The Smashing Machine,” Johnson plays UFC and MMA legend Kerr, who battled prescription drug addiction. Blunt, 42, plays Kerr’s now-ex-wife, Dawn Staples.
At the film’s press conference Monday afternoon, Johnson explained that he’s been waiting for a role this rewarding for a long time.
“When you’re in Hollywood — as we all know, it had become about box office. And you chase the box office, and the box office can be very loud and it can become very resounding and it can push you into a category and into a corner,” he explained. “This is your lane and this is what you do and this is what Hollywood wants you to do.”
“I just had this burning desire and voice that was saying, ‘What if there is more and what if I can?’ A lot of times, it’s harder for us — or at least for me — to know what you’re capable of when you’ve been pigeonholed into something,” the “Jumanji” star continued. “Sometimes it takes people that who you love and respect, like Emily and Benny, to say that you can.”
Johnson went on: “I looked around a few years ago and I started to think, you know, am I living my dream or am I living other people’s dreams? You come to that recognition and I think you can either fall in line — ‘Well, it’s status quo, things are good, I don’t want to rock the boat’ — or go, I want to live my dreams now and do what I wanna do and tap into the stuff that I want to tap into and have a place finally to put all this stuff that I’ve experienced in the past that I’ve shied away from.”
“I’ve been scared to go deep and intense and raw until now, until I had this opportunity,” he added.
Johnson also said that the film based on Kerr’s life “is not even really about fighting — it’s a love story.”
“The Smashing Machine” will be released in theaters Oct. 3.
