# [What Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson Knows About Pain](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/magazine/dwayne-johnson-the-rock-smashing-machine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.D11V.-D3vsNXRBE1a&smid=url-share) Sam Anderson for The New York Times Somehow, this interview and feature amped my excitement for seeing *The Smashing Machine*, which was already quite high. Even more so, it made me appreciate Johnson more than the big man in Hollywood I have come to think of him as. > We were scheduled to talk for four hours but ended up talking for more than eight. I not only met Johnson’s bull — we fed it caramel-flavored snacks over a fence — but also went out with Johnson to a steakhouse where, at one point, a whole 16th-birthday party tried to break into our private back room. And the conversation did not end there. Beginning the morning after our interview, I started to receive voice memos and videos from Johnson: thoughts, stories, further questions. At the end of August, when I dropped my son off at college, Johnson sent a Spotify link (Sawyer Brown’s 1991 song “The Walk”) along with a message that read like a soulful haiku: > > *To listen to later* > *You and I both have taken “the walk”* > *Now it’s your son’s time* > > Hour after hour, text after text, the topic Johnson and I returned to was pain. The interview and the film have made me think of Johnson as, you know, an actual person and not Luke Hobbs or The Rock. The cynic might see this whole cog as a part of the rebranding machine inside Hollywood as Johnson looks for more dramatic roles. I took it as a reality check back on me. These stars are people just like you and me. We all carry pain. Some use it. Some abuse it. Some share it. Give this one a read. It's worth it. And come on, Anderson wrote this *immaculate* line. > " Each of his thighs should probably be listed separately in the final credits..."