On a bright and sunny afternoon in Los Angeles, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had just wrapped up a grueling day of filming for a fitness campaign. Instead of heading straight home, he decided to take a detour through a nearby park, hoping to enjoy the fresh air and lively atmosphere. Families picnicked under shady trees, children chased soccer balls, and the rhythmic squeak of basketball sneakers echoed from the courts.
As he strolled past the basketball court, a different sound caught his attention: raised voices, mocking laughter, and the faint thud of a basketball being kicked. His sharp eyes locked onto a group of older boys surrounding a much smaller boy. The smaller boy, clutching a worn-out basketball, stood his ground, shoulders squared, but his face betrayed fear.
Dwayne’s pace quickened, his towering frame and unmistakable presence turning heads as he approached the commotion. The older boys froze, their bravado quickly fading when they realized who was walking toward them.
“Hey!” Dwayne’s deep, commanding voice cut through the noise like a knife. The group of bullies turned, their confidence dissolving into awkward shuffles. “What’s going on here?” he asked, his tone firm but calm.
“Uh, nothing, sir. We were just joking around,” one of them stammered nervously, glancing at his friends. Dwayne raised an eyebrow, crossing his massive arms. “Joking around doesn’t look like a joke to me.” He shifted his gaze to the smaller boy, kneeling slightly to meet him at eye level. “You okay, buddy?”
The boy nodded, though his grip on the basketball tightened. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, his voice shaky.
“What’s your name?” Dwayne asked gently.
“Well, Ethan, you’re pretty brave standing up like that,” Dwayne said with a small smile. “Takes guts.”
Turning back to the bullies, Dwayne’s calm demeanor didn’t mask the seriousness in his eyes. “Let me make something very clear,” he said, his voice steady. “Picking on someone smaller than you doesn’t make you strong; it just shows how weak you really are. If I see this happen again, you’re going to have to deal with me. Got it?”
The boys nodded hastily, mumbling apologies before scattering in different directions. With the bullies gone, Dwayne turned back to Ethan, who still seemed a bit shaken. “You sure you’re okay?”
Ethan nodded again. “Yeah, thank you, Mr. Johnson.”
“Call me Dwayne,” he said, crouching down again. “So, you play basketball?”
Ethan hesitated, looking down at his scuffed shoes. “I try, but they always say I’m too small to be good. I just want to make my school team.”
Dwayne chuckled, a warm and reassuring sound. “Too small? Let me tell you something, kid: size doesn’t matter nearly as much as heart. And from what I just saw, you’ve got plenty of that.”
Ethan’s lips curled into a small smile. Dwayne stood up and extended a hand. “Come on, let’s see what you’ve got.”
For the next hour, Dwayne stayed at the park, playing basketball with Ethan. Parents and other kids gathered around, pulling out their phones to capture the surreal moment of The Rock mentoring a young boy. Dwayne didn’t just shoot hoops; he gave Ethan tips on his technique, taught him how to hold his ground on defense, and shared stories of his own struggles growing up.
“You know,” Dwayne said during a break, sitting on the bench with Ethan, “I wasn’t always this big. I got picked on too. But you know what? I used that as fuel. I worked hard, stayed focused, and proved them all wrong. You can do the same.”
Ethan nodded, his confidence visibly growing with every word. Before leaving, Dwayne handed Ethan a small card with his team’s contact information. “Here’s the deal: you practice every day, work hard, and when you’re ready, my team will get you into a real training camp. Sound good?”
Ethan’s eyes lit up. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. But the hard work? That’s all on you, champ. Get started.”
They fist-bumped, and as Dwayne walked away, the park buzzed with chatter about what had just happened. Ethan took Dwayne’s words to heart, practicing diligently every day, honing his skills and building his confidence. True to his promise, Dwayne’s team arranged for Ethan to attend a basketball training camp, where he impressed the coaches with his determination and heart.
By the end of the season, Ethan made his school team. During his first game, he scored the winning basket, proving to everyone—and most importantly, to himself—that size was no match for determination and hard work.
As the crowd cheered, Ethan spotted someone in the stands. There, wearing a cap and sunglasses, was Dwayne Johnson, clapping proudly.
“I told you, champ,” Dwayne said, giving him a high five. “It’s all about heart.”
Ethan beamed, knowing that this moment was just the beginning of his journey, all thanks to the unexpected encounter with a true hero.
Dwayne Johnson recalls being bullied as a kid and arrested for theft
HE’S almost two metres tall and 115 kilograms of pure muscle, but even Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson knows what it feels like to be bullied — and arrested.
LOOKING at him now, it’s hard to imagine that man mountain Dwayne Johnson was ever bullied as a kid. The 44 year old cuts an imposing figure at almost 2m tall and with 115kg of pure muscle, but he reveals he was often picked on in his youth after moving around a lot with his wrestler father Rocky.
“I was always the new kid so that made me a target,” he says. “We moved so much that we lived in fourteen different states because my dad was on the road which was unsettling and disorientating. I used to get into a lot of fights. I wouldn’t start them, but you know when you’re the new kid …,” Johnson said.
Dwayne Johnson said he and Kevin Hart connected on and off the screen. Picture: Claire Folger/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. via AP
In new buddy cop action comedy Central Intelligence, Johnson plays a CIA agent who’s never really overcome the shame of being bullied as a kid. With the aid of CGI, Johnson plays himself as an obese teenager being humiliated at high school, while Ride Along star Kevin Hart takes on the role of Calvin, the most popular kid in school. Twenty years later the pair team up for a case but the script has been flipped — now Bob is a cool, buff action man while Calvin has a dead-end job and a marriage on the rocks. Despite this, Bob still hero worships his old friend and retains his insecurities from high school.
“His personality, his mind never really matured beyond that traumatising moment (at school) so he’s this very earnest, childlike character who’s still looking for approval and validation. And that, I’d never seen before,” Johnson says of the script’s appeal.
Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul makes a cameo appearance in Central Intelligence. Picture: Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (We’re the Millers) the film reverses expectations — funnyman Hart is essentially the straight man, while Johnson does much of the comedic heavy lifting. Johnson says he was originally in the frame to play Calvin but, “I loved the idea of switching up these roles and playing against expectation and the script got reworked to fit me,” he explains, adding he suggested Hart for the role. “We were thinking of a couple of guys, big names and Kevin’s wasn’t even on the list,” he says. “We’d met a couple of times and clicked, he’s such a great guy and just popped into my head and I suggested him to Rawson and the studio heads and it took them a couple of seconds but they liked it, they liked the image of the two of us on screen.”
The pair have a clear chemistry and improvised many of the scenes. “It’s natural for Kevin, everything that spills out is comedy gold and I have experience doing it (improvising) from the WWE, our performances were about reacting and provoking,” he says. The pair will reteam on the upcoming remake of Jumanji.
While Johnson is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars today, he had some tough times growing up. He fell in with a bad crowd as a teenager and was arrested “eight or nine” times as part of an organised theft ring in Hawaii that targeted tourists’ expensive clothes and jewellery. His personal crime wave began at 14 after seeing his mother being evicted and not wanting to put pressure on her to buy him the things he wanted. The police even turned up to his school one day to arrest him during class.
Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart will reteam for the remake of Jumanji. Picture: Supplied
“Yeah, I was a delinquent,” he says. “It was when I was in the ninth grade. I was doing stupid stuff and the cops came into the class. I was humiliated more than anything.”
Johnson also battled depression in his early 20s when he was passed over by the NFL and was cut from his team — the Calgary Stampeders — in the Canadian Football League at the age of 24.
“I had just seven bucks in my pocket, I had nowhere to live and I had to move back into my parents’ house and that was a low blow. I was lost, I didn’t know where I was going to go, what was going to come next because I couldn’t see a future.
“In hindsight it was also the best thing to happen to me because I learned during that period no one was going to hand me a life, I wasn’t going to get back on my feet feeling sorry for myself, I had to pick myself up and keep going and fighting and grasp and claw and scratch at every opportunity that came my way.”
Dwayne ”The Rock” Johnson during his wrestling days. Picture: Supplied.
Johnson’s entertainment career began in the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE) in 1996. Originally billed as Rocky Maivia, he later became The Rock and remains the most successful and popular wrestler ever to step into the ring. He parlayed that into acting success, impressing the producers of The Mummy Returns (2001) so much they created a lead role for him in the following year’s prequel The Scorpion King in 2002. He was paid $5.5 million, a record amount for an actor in his first lead. While his penchant for kids films and comedies means he probably hasn’t lived up to those initial expectations he would be the “new Schwarzenegger” he has become one of Hollywood’s most bankable actors in Walking Tall, The Game Plan, Doom, Get Smart, Race To Witch Mountain, The Other Guys, GI Joel: Retaliation, Pain and Gain, Journey 2, San Andreas and the Fast and the Furious film series. (He also holds the Guinness World Record for taking 105 selfies with fans in three minutes at the London premiere of San Andreas).
His dance card is currently full with IMDB suggesting he has ten films in various stages of production and 14 more in development. “Well IMDB may have exaggerated just a little,” he laughs.
Dwayne Johnson said he had a blast making the Baywatch reboot. Pictured here with the cast including Zac Efron. Picture: Paramount Pictures
There’s season two of his HBO series Ballers (in which he plays an ex-football star), the Jumanji remake, Fast 8, the San Andreas sequel, two more Journey films, Robert Ludlam adaptation The Janson Directive, Shane Black’s Doc Savage, a remake of Big Trouble in Little China and action thriller Skyscraper among others. And he’s just finished the big screen reboot of Baywatch with Zac Efron. “Man, what a blast!” he says. “We’ve just finished on that. I have never had so much fun on set. It’s the all-time beach movie based on a show that everyone in the world watched at some point in their lives. And we’ve brought the edge and really pushed the envelope.”
He attributes his ongoing success to always remembering the tough times, and how fortunate he is.
“I think about them every day in some shape or other,” he explains. “I know what it’s like to struggle, have no money whatsoever. Live pay cheque to pay cheque and that worry and anxiety and how it can rule your life, and dreaming big but worrying that you’re never going to get there.
“I like to keep those times close to my heart and that helps me not so much achieve success but to appreciate it and never take it for granted. That’s a mistake that a lot of people, no just in Hollywood, in life make and your past is who you are, it made you into the person sitting here right now and as long as you never forget that you’re on the right track.”
Central Intelligence opens today.
