During his days of depression, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson locked himself in for a month and a half without contacting anyone.
Few people know that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – a famous former wrestler, Hollywood action movie star, once pursued his passion to become a professional rugby player.
In 1991 while studying at the University of Miami, Dwayne signed up to join the team and quickly proved his talent as a defender when helping the team win the national championship.
In his ambitious twenties, Dwayne thought life would not be complete without playing football.
By the time of his graduation, however, Dwayne Johnson was the only man in the defense who was not signed to the National Football League.
Dwayne Johnson was born on May 2, 1972 in Hayward, California, USA.
The shock after being excluded from the national team led him to move to the Calgary Stampeders team in Canada with a salary of only 250 USD / week.
However, this period did not last long because in 1995, Dwayne was quickly fired when he was 23 years old.
From the moment he received the phone call asking Dwayne to “get off the team”, everything seemed to fall apart for the young man. After the flight back to Miami, he had to call his father to come pick him up.
Currently Dwayne Johnson is already a Hollywood star, but his past has had many ups and downs.
“I didn’t have a car at that time. My father picked me up in his pickup truck. On the way home, I suddenly thought I didn’t know how much money I had left. I opened my wallet and found there was only one note left in it. $5 bill, a $1 bill and a few odd coins for a total of only $7.
At that time, I wanted more money and my friend, the footballer Warren Sapp, had just signed a contract worth millions of dollars. Before that, it was Warren who kicked me out of the Miami team. I’m not jealous of him at all. We’re still good friends to this day and I’m so happy for Warren.
To be honest, at that time, I was disappointed because what I wanted to have and worked hard for a long time to achieve, was out of reach, and other people got it. It’s a memory I will never forget ,” Dwayne recounts the moment the difficult time began.
In his youth Dwayne Johnson pursued his dream of becoming a professional rugby player.
When Dwayne’s goal of becoming a professional player “died to ashes”, the shame of being fired, the feeling of disappointment in himself, led him to depression .
In November 2015, the actor and former wrestler shared about this ups and downs in an interview at Oprah Winfrey’s “Oprah’s Master Class” show:
“One of the most important things you need to know is that you’re not alone. You think you’re alone but the truth is, you’re just living in your shadow. I just wish someone pulled me aside and said “hey, everything will be fine” at that time.
For a month and a half after being fired from the Calgary Stampeders, Dwayne Johnson locked himself in the small apartment where he lived with his parents.
“I think the most important thing to combat depression is to understand you’re not alone. You’re not the first to experience it, nor the last to experience it.
Sometimes it happens, you feel alone, trapped in a bubble. I wish someone would come up to me and say everything was going to be okay. I wish I understood that.”
The star tells about the time he faced depression at the age of 23 after being fired from the team in Canada.
Recalling that time, the “Fast and Furious” star said it was a battle that he “nearly lost”. Everyone knows that depression, if prolonged, will become heavy and haunting people, even causing many people to seek death.
“I felt confused, directionless with my life. I didn’t go out for 6 weeks. I stayed in my room with the door closed and gnawed on my sadness. I wondered what I would do next to get out of it. this situation?”
One day, Dwayne Johnson received a special phone call. The head coach of the Calgary Stampeders suddenly asked him to return to the team.
Amidst the days of “locking up” himself and sinking into depression, the phone call seemed to have “awakened” Dwayne.
He realized that the meaning of life was determined by himself and had to create his own path for the future. Dwayne turned down an invitation to return to Canada to pursue a family wrestling career (his father is Rocky Johnson, a former boxer, the first African American wrestling champion in history).
Although at first, Rocky Johnson opposed his son’s decision and called it “the worst mistake of his life”, Dwayne was undeterred.
He persistently persuaded his father to ask him to train. Dwayn e shared, men can have a hard time seeking help. In any case, what you should do is “keep the faith” .
“At the point of getting up and starting over again, I always believed that behind the pain there was something good ,” said Dwayne Johnson.
And so instead of choosing the NFL, he decided to pursue WWE – World Wrestling Federation, and then a few years later became famous with the nickname “The Rock” and became an all-star wrestling star. bridge.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson made history as the first boxer of the third generation of wrestlers and also the most famous. He won 17 WWE championships, including 10 world heavyweight championships.
“Today we do what they don’t, tomorrow we’ll get what they don’t.” – Dwayne Johnson.
With a muscular body, strong masculine demeanor, challenging statements, “The Rock” always attracts the audience every time it appears.
At the peak of his career, the football defender who was fired every year was completely a star. He was dubbed: The People’s Champion – something that many other wrestlers aspire to.
“The Rock” won his first World Boxing Championship (WWF) in 1998 at just 26 years old and won six consecutive titles before turning 30.
“I keep one thing in mind every day: wake up with determination and go to bed with satisfaction. I want to think of the most difficult times in the past to motivate today. Think about 5 years first. Think about where you are today. Think about 5 years from now on what you want to achieve. Be unstoppable,” the former boxer once shared.
In 2001, Dwayne Johnson starred in the movie “The Mummy Returns” (Egyptian Mummy) as the Scorpion King, marking his transformation from a professional boxer to an actor.
The potential of a star attraction from Dwayne earned him his own movie the following year, “The Scorpion King” (2002).
In this film, Dwayn received a world record salary for an actor playing a leading role for the first time – $ 5.5 million. It was the commercial success and the fact that the name was spread to many other fields that made Dwayne excited and announced his retirement from the WWE ring in 2009.
In the following years, Dwayne’s name was confirmed through the roles of extremely cool muscular heroes. In 2003, when “The Rundown” was released, Rolling Stone praised Dwayne Johnson saying: “He possesses both action and humor. Dwayne Johnson is a real movie star”.
After more than 10 years of moving from the ring to the screen, Dwayne Johnson has become one of the most expensive stars in the action movie genre today.
The property of “The Rock” is currently about 190 million USD.
Dwayne’s film career is growing, he participated in many blockbusters such as “Fast & Furious” (parts 5, 6, 7, 8), “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” (2012), “GI Joe: Retaliation” (2013), “Hercules: The Thracian Wars” (2014), “San Andreas” (2015)…
In his memoir “The Rock Says”, Dwayne shares the secret to his victory in wrestling and later Hollywood:
“Only when I have strong muscles can I feel myself. I work out day and night and eat with a strict regimen to get the body I want. That’s my ideal of life, helped me gain confidence and develop my career”.
Talking about his decision to retire from WWE to focus on entering the acting profession in 2009, the actor was not afraid to admit:
“Wrestling is just a temporary profession. The problem is that quite a lot of wrestlers don’t realize that temporary. They will have to rush to the ring just to earn 100 US dollars, when participating in the competition. If you participate in fan signings, you’ll only get $200.”
” I’m tired of fighting all night and only making $40, eating at a popular restaurant. On weekends, I have to fight at flea markets, weekend markets, umbrella shops- bowl or in the barn on the farm.
Then I had to act out cutting my own forehead with a razor. During that time, I never once asked myself: “Do I really deserve this? Am I human?”.
“In 1995 I had seven dollars in my pocket and I know two things for sure: I’m broken and one day I won’t be able to do it again.”
Now that she has become an action movie star, looking back on the ups and downs she has gone through, Dwayne Johnson can’t help but feel honored and proud.
” We’ve all heard a lot of different messages in our lives. But there’s one message that you always have to listen to, and that’s when your inner instinct says you haven’t tried your best.”
“It’s important that you take good care of yourself, both physically and mentally, to avoid falling into a slump.”
Source: soha.vn
