Fear is not something typically associated with Dwayne Johnson. Certainly not in the ring, as the charismatic heel with the cocked eyebrow, and not in Hollywood, where he has cemented himself as one of the industry’s most bankable, and singular, action stars and producers.
By all accounts the formula was working. Yet for years he’d had a suspicion that he could do more, offer more, as an actor. But when it came time to dive into something more raw, more vulnerable for “The Smashing Machine,” a drama about MMA fighter Mark Kerr that he’d been thinking about for over a decade, he realized something: He was scared.
