The Rock still looks like The Rock — broad shoulders, easy charisma, a frame that could fill most doorways. But lately, Dwayne Johnson appears noticeably leaner, and fans have been quick to notice.
At the Toronto International Film Festival this week, Johnson finally explained the shift. His weight loss, he said, is no accident but part of his preparation for an unlikely new role. “We’re gonna make a film called Lizard Music,” Johnson told a packed audience during the festival’s “In Conversation With…” series. The project, adapted from Daniel Pinkwater’s cult novel, features Johnson as a whimsical septuagenarian known as the Chicken Man — whose closest companion, in the story, happens to be a chicken of roughly the same age.
“It’s eccentric, it’s whimsical, and it’s exciting for me,” Johnson said. “I get a chance to hopefully transform again like I was able to do in Smashing Machine. Can’t wait.”
The mention of transformation is no throwaway line. Johnson, who made his name on rippling muscles and action-hero bravado, has increasingly chosen roles that challenge those expectations. In The Smashing Machine, which premiered to strong reviews at Venice last month, he embodies former MMA fighter Mark Kerr with a bulked-up, battle-worn physicality. That performance has already sparked talk of Oscar contention.
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For Lizard Music, however, Johnson is moving in the opposite direction — shedding the heavy muscle mass that has defined his career. “This is me slimmed down,” he told the Toronto crowd, before adding that the transformation is still a work in progress. “I still have a long ways to go.”
The Rock’s shifting body is not just cosmetic, but symbolic of an actor in motion. At 53, he is carving out space beyond the blockbuster mold, exploring roles that require as much vulnerability as they do size and strength. Where once he was cast as indestructible, Johnson now appears intent on showing something more nuanced: resilience, eccentricity, even fragility.
Whether audiences will embrace the Chicken Man as readily as they embraced the Scorpion King is still to be seen. But for now, Johnson seems energized by the prospect. His career has always been built on reinvention — wrestler, action star, entrepreneur — and Lizard Music may be his strangest, and most daring, transformation yet.