Vanity Fair’s Profile of The Rock is Just Fantastic

Sure It Doesn’t Ask Any “Hard Questions” But Maybe It’s Okay To Just Appreciate His Journey

I don’t stan. I don’t have heroes or mentors. There are people whom I admire as humans but even then it’s about choices they make and consistency with which they live their lives. That said, I GUESS I LOVE THE ROCK.

Writer Chris Heath and Photographer Mark Seliger do a wonderful job of summarizing what we seem to love about Dwayne Johnson, namely his drive and heart. And Vanity Fair gives them all the pages they need in November’s issue. One of my favorite passages:

The simple, empirical truth is this: Dwayne Johnson is the most successful movie star in the world, and has been for some time. For each of the last five years, he was, according to Forbes’s annual list, either the highest or second-highest paid actor. (In that period, he is estimated to have earned a total of $430.4 million.)

“It sits me down,” says Johnson, mulling this circumstance. “It sits me down. That was never the goal. The goal was just: I didn’t want to be broke. And I didn’t want my family to be broke anymore.”

and

Johnson’s friend Oprah Winfrey detects something distinctive at work here. “Most people have the ‘Do you see me?’ gene,” she says, “but he truly has the ‘I see you’ gene. And I think the reason why he’s adored is because he is adoring of other people…. He really is what he appears to be. And people know that.”

There’s a ton more about his relationship with his family, especially his father, and it’s clear that he’s human, with emotional pain that he carries.

Also, he still has zero respect for #candyass Vin Diesel.