How did you make the move from wrestling to Hollywood?
I consider wrestling to be a physical soap opera because it’s scripted and it’s fun. For me, it was a great platform to cut my teeth on and to learn how to work multiple cameras every single night. We would shoot four hours of live television for 60,000 people every night. That is an extreme sink or swim situation. Sometimes my monologues would fly and they would be awesome, but sometimes they’d sink. It was a great place to learn about entertainment.
How would you describe a typical day in the life of Dwayne Johnson on the set of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island?
Generally, I would get up between 3 and 4 o’clock in the morning. I don’t sleep much, so I start my day early with some tea and I send out my morning Tweet before heading to the gym. I usually do weights and cardio for an hour to an hour and a half – and then I go to set.
How often do you work out?
I train five days a week, but that’s my Zen space; that’s the anchor to my day. My early morning work out prepares me for the day. After that, I am ready to work for 12 to 14 hours or however long I’m needed on set.
Do you ever sleep?!
To be honest, I hardly ever sleep. I get maybe five hours a night, but that’s it. I’m very sensitive about my body and my energy levels, so I do get my sleep. It’s just that I don’t need eight or nine hours every night.
Do you have to watch what you eat when you’re working?
I eat a lot of calories. It’s probably somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 calories a day, but it’s a balanced program between my carbohydrates, my protein, my fats and my greens.
Do you have a special chef on set to prepare your meals?
I don’t have a special chef on set, but I do lock into a local chef whenever I start work in a new town. I eat seven to eight meals a day, so that’s a lot of food – but I found a local chef when we were shooting Journey 2 in Hawaii. He was able to cook for me in bulk, so it was easy to stay on top of everything.
What was your biggest challenge in shooting this movie?
A lot of the underwater sequences were challenging because they were very different to anything I’d done before. We all had to get scuba certified in order to shoot those scenes and we ended up spending days underwater. They were really interesting scenes to shoot because our characters can’t wear scuba gear on screen, so we had a special scuba team off to the side – off camera – that would come across whenever we needed air.
What mysterious island would you most like to explore?
There are two islands that I would like to explore: one is real and one is not. The real island I would like to explore is Oahu, Hawaii. That’s the island where I grew up and it’s the island where we shot this movie, so I have a lot of fun memories from the place. I have a real love for the island and its people. The other island I would go to is the one that I go to every night. That’s the one in here in my heart. But it’s a special place and not everybody is invited.
How much of an adventurer are you?
I’m not a big adventurer. My life in itself is an adventure for me, but I don’t feel the need to go and climb a mountain or anything like that. To be honest, I am perfectly happy when I’m sitting at home doing nothing. If I’m not shooting a movie, I love spending time doing nothing at all. I don’t want the TV on. I don’t want music on. If I have music on, it has to be instrumental because I don’t want to hear words. I don’t want words in my brain and I don’t do a thing. I just sit there and that’s bliss to me.
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Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is in UK cinemas today! See all our coverage of the movie here.
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About David Sztypuljak
