1 / 5

2025 Invision

Dwayne Johnson, from left, Benny Safdie and Emily Blunt pose to promote their film "The Smashing Machine" on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)

Fear is not something one typically associates with Dwayne Johnson. Certainly not in the ring, as the charismatic heel with the cocked eyebrow, and not in Hollywood, where he has cemented himself as one of the industry’s most bankable, and singular, action stars and producers.

By all accounts the formula was working. Yet for years he’d had a suspicion that he could do more, offer more, as an actor. But when it came time to dive into something more raw, more vulnerable for “The Smashing Machine,” a drama about MMA fighter Mark Kerr that he’d been thinking about for over a decade,

See Full Page