The Rock set to body slam Hollywood

When Hollywood went looking for a man-mountain to replace Arnie and Sly they found him in a little boy from Grey Lynn who became a WWF superstar, reports ROBERT WARD.

The meanest Mummy of 'em all has returned with a vengeance. But he and his nemesis - the tomb raider played by Brendan Fraser - have had to move over for a force that's bigger than both of them.

The sequel to the surprise 1999 action-adventure blockbuster The Mummy begins with a prologue that introduces a character called the Scorpion King to the franchise, and the reigning World Wrestling Federation champ known as the Rock, to movies.

In the process, Hollywood believes it may have discovered a contender to replace ageing action-movie superstars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme as they fade away more or less gracefully.

The Rock, a 29-year-old man-mountain who stands 196cm tall and weighs in at 125kg, has a huge following among TV wrestling fans all over the world. And although he's seen in The Mummy Returns only twice - as a muscular warrior king in the prologue and as a special-effects-enhanced creature resembling a large crayfish in the climactic fight with the Mummy and Fraser - he was a major draw for the crowds who paid $US68 million ($NZ153 million) to see the film in its opening weekend in the United States.

The studio knew that in advance, so it featured the Rock more prominently in the billboards, and gave him slightly more real estate than Fraser. Studio suits became so excited with the Rock's on-screen charisma when they watched daily footage of his work before the camera in Morocco that they signed him to star in a spin-off movie called The Scorpion King which went into production before The Mummy Returns even hit theatres.

For his first starring role, the Rock was paid $12.4 million - not bad for someone who had made only one other film and has had to take acting lessons on the job. Not bad, either, for someone who claims that five years ago he had only $16 to his name.

It didn't come easy, though. During the shoot in Morocco he fell victim to what he believes was a combination of eating something bad and sunstroke. "I had two blankets over me outside in 100-degree weather," he says. "I was freezing."

Dwayne Johnson, as the Rock is known to his mum, was born and brought up in Hawaii. Wrestling was in his blood: his father, Rocky Johnson, a black Canadian, wrestled for the WWF in the 80s, and his maternal grandfather, Peter Maivia, was a pro wrestler in the 70s.

Despite growing up in the industry, Johnson jun opted first for American football, attending the University of Miami on a football scholarship. He graduated in 1995 with a degree in criminology but missed getting drafted by the National Football League and ended up in a Canadian pro football team in Calgary.

Those were the $16 days, and when he was cut from the Canadian team, that's when he decided to go into the family business. His original WWF name was Rocky Maivia, a tribute to his father and his grandfather, but that was shortened to the Rock when his wrestling character was reinvented as a provocative loudmouth with a signature move, the coccyx-crunching Rock Bottom, a cocky raising of the right eyebrow and stock phrases like "Do you smell what the Rock is cooking?"

But when the Rock was just a pebble, he didn't like much what he smelled cooking for lunch in New Zealand.

His mother came from Apia, Western Samoa, and the family spent a year in Auckland while his father worked for longtime wrestling promoter Steve Rickard. Johnson was 9 and he played rugby in Grey Lynn.

"I tried rugby and I wasn't big on it," he says. The former American football pro agrees that he keeps in great shape and he'd be fast as a rugby player, but adds that's fine, "till you get hit, with no pads! And it hurts!"

The other thing he remembers about New Zealand was lunch. "I had come from Hawaii, so I was used to hamburger and French fries, whatever, but there I remember our lunches were always the little meat pies."

No wonder the meat pies in New Zealand didn't cut it. He is reported to have eaten 15 steaks at a sitting during The Mummy Returns shoot in Morocco - director Stephen Sommers says he's never seen a human being eat so much - but Johnson says they served steaks small in Morocco.

Johnson defies any prejudices you may harbour about WWF wrestlers. He's intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, and has a quiet but resonant voice with a touch of southern politeness that recalls Elvis.

He even sang Presley's Love Me Tender (well) on an episode of the satirical American TV show Saturday Night Live last year. His performance then was what first made Hollywood sit up and smell the screen potential of this incredible hulk who wasn't too macho to appear in drag.

He also appears genuinely humble about his entry into film acting. "I'd received a lot of scripts but they lacked depth.

"Not that the role in The Mummy Returns was a big challenge in terms of dialogue and showing a lot of emotions, but we just felt it was the right opportunity, certainly not too much, not too little, strategic placement in the beginning and the end."

WWF wrestling had given him some training in acting, of course. "We have writers, we have producers, we have a director and we have costume designers. Obviously it's a very visceral industry with confrontations with every storyline we have going on, it will ultimately lead to somebody fighting somebody."

But the range of emotions falls short of film, "like there's no crying in wrestling."

There were times in the ring when he must have felt like it. For all the scripting, wrestlers are injured: "Our chairs are not prop chairs, they're steel chairs. The posts are steel, the floor, concrete - it hurts. So, yeah, everything hurts. There's no stunt doubles, no body doubles."

He's ended up in hospital a few times with wrestling injuries. "I've busted blood vessels in my chest, spit up a lot of blood. My knees, back, shoulders, things like that."

Johnson was written out of WWF storylines while he shot The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King and realises it won't be too long before he's written out permanently. "But the ties will always be there. Much like Arnold has his ties to bodybuilding, I'll always be part of that."

Schwarzenegger went to one of Johnson's WWF matches while he was promoting one of his own films, Stallone introduced himself to Johnson at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball match and both men have encouraged him. But Johnson balks at suggestions that he could take their place as action-movie superheroes.

"I can only be the Rock, and I know what I can do physically, and then with help and direction from good people around me like the director and the studios and actors, hopefully good things will happen.

"I'm so impressed by those guys because they don't need to be supportive. Regardless of their maturity, they are still the men! They've cornered that market, that genre, and hey, there's Rambo and Rocky and there's the Terminator. But they have been supportive and to me it says a lot."

For all the cockiness of his alter ego, Johnson says the key to his success has been vulnerability, and that may continue to be the key in his new career. "In the WWF I'm over the top and I talk rubbish but I lose. Not all the time, but I lose, I get my butt kicked, sometimes I'm the guy left lying in the ring bloody and we're going off the air that way. And everybody can relate to being vulnerable,'cause I can only watch Superman for so long."

He won't be telling studio execs to "Come get some!" the way the Rock taunts his opponents in the ring. "I don't know if I could be a cocky guy because I remember where I came from, and my cockiness would lead me back in the poorhouse."

* The Mummy Returns opens in New Zealand cinemas on Thursday.