MiddletownJournal.com

The Rock digs deeper in new drama

ATLANTA — Though he looms into a room like a massive totem carved out of, well, rock, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson — all 6-feet-5 of him — carries a sincere, slightly vulnerable air. And no, it's not just because the star of "Gridiron Gang" (opening Friday) has his left foot in a cast.

"It happened June 19th, approximately 5:30 in the afternoon," he says in comic deadpan, remembering a day of football practice, preparing for his next film, "The Game Plan."

"I took a snap, rolled around, threw the ball — and as I landed, just at that precise moment everything was aligned perfectly to snap my Achilles tendon right in half."

He chuckles. "I gotta tell you, hey — life is beautiful, and life sucks sometimes."

Johnson, 34, has seen a lot more of the beautiful side of things in the five years since a tiny role in "The Mummy Returns" kicked off his successful transition from WWE wrestling headliner to mainstream film star — mostly in action flicks like "The Rundown," "The Scorpion King" and "Doom."

"Gridiron Gang" marks a significant genre change: a fact-based film built around Johnson in his first seriously dramatic role. He plays Sean Porter, the real-life California juvenile detention camp probation officer who built self-worth in his lawbreaking charges by turning them into a football team. (A 1993 TV documentary about him, also called "Gridiron Gang," won an Emmy.)

The role is an ideal fit for Johnson, who played college football for the University of Miami. He also knows his way around detention centers, since he was repeatedly arrested as a kid. "For theft and fighting, and for fighting and a little bit of theft," he says with a laugh. "It was a matter, Steve, of me running around with the wrong people."

Casually dropping that "Steve" is typical of how Johnson presents himself: friendly, relaxed, on a first-name basis. He perches at the sofa's edge, never breaking eye contact, answering questions with soft-spoken enthusiasm. There's no talk of his patented wrestling move the People's Elbow, and his famous eyebrow never arches iconically toward the ceiling.

Johnson's father and grandfather were both professional WWF wrestlers, but in high school he was all about football. He earned a scholarship to Miami, where he played defensive tackle and was on track for the NFL draft. But in 1995, he ruptured three disks in his back, had multiple knee surgeries.

"The truth of the matter is, there was a guy by the name of Warren Sapp [at Miami] who was chomping at the bit to get out there, and he flat-out beat me out of my position," Johnson says. "At the end of the day, I was a good college football player, and not good enough to go to the NFL."

Johnson signed with the Canadian Football League, but was soon cut.

"That was the most difficult time of my life," he says. "Everybody else around me gets drafted. They're making millions of dollars, and I'm like, 'OK, how do I readjust?' "

So at age 23, he moved back in with his folks in Florida.

"I kid you not, I had $7 in my pocket," he says. "And it wasn't all paper, either — it was change, man, and I'll never forget that."

That's when he decided to follow his father and grandfather into the wrestling ring, even though he'd grown up traveling the circuit with his dad, and knew its hand-to-mouth existence.

"My dad was adamantly against it," he recalls. "He wanted me to continue pursuing football, and I knew there was no way that I was going to do that, certainly not for 250 dollars — Canadian — a week.

"Finally my dad said, 'Look around.' We're in a one-bedroom apartment in Tampa. He said, 'This is all I have, and I don't want this for you.'"

Johnson pauses. "I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it — when you hear a man broken down that way. And now, being a dad myself, I understand that love for your kid."

But Johnson wouldn't give in to his father. "I said, 'Are you gonna train me, or not?' And he did. It was tough love, but he did."

So the actor knows something about second chances, and that's one reason "Gridiron Gang" appealed to him. In addition to his film work, he's the spokesman for After-School All Stars, offering programs for at-risk middle school kids to help keep them out of the kind of trouble Johnson got into at that age.

Filming at California's Camp Kilpatrick, the actual detention center where Porter once worked, Johnson and crew members interacted with the young inmates. "You get these kids watching from solitary confinement, through the bars, as we shoot," he says. "We talked to them every day to tell them, 'Listen, this is a movie about your life. It ends on a positive note because some of these kids here before you got out and made the right decisions. Some didn't. Some died. ...

"I would tell them daily, 'You get preached to all the time, but the one message I want to drive home to you guys is, you're gonna get out and you're gonna get a second chance. Make the most of it.' "

The actor has made the most of his. He's serious about the film world, studying with acting coach Howard Fine with the same discipline he brought to sports. "I take this extremely seriously and want to do well," he says. "I don't want to just, quote, 'Try the acting thing.' You're going to get out of it what you put into it, and if you think this is just 'the acting thing' and it's easy, you're sadly mistaken."

Steve Murray writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.