'Scorpion King' Star The Rock-- From The People's Champ to Fatherhood
He's battled 400-pound giants and 50-year-old wrestling legends and escaped relatively unharmed. He's been trapped inside an ambulance (after being beaten with a hammer) while a semi-truck slammed into it repeatedly, only to walk out in one piece. He's even survived working in 100 degree heat with a fever and a severe case of food poisoning. He's six-time World Wrestling Federation champion The Rock, a man who seems to be able to conquer anything, but really is a lot more fragile than one would think.
Despite appearing like a living, breathing terminator, Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock) is really just like anyone else. In fact, during the production of "The Scorpion King," the spin-off to his feature film debut in "The Mummy Returns," he faced two of his biggest challenges yet-- working with animals and becoming a father.
In "The Scorpion King" Johnson plays Mathayus, an Akkadian Assassin sent to kill a sorceress (Kelly Hu) who supplies an evil warlord named Memnon (Steven Brand) with his most valuable weapon-- the ability to foresee the future. What seems like a routine assassination though quickly goes bad, and Memnon kills Mathayus' brother-- the last living member of his family-- before his very eyes. Vowing revenge, Mathayus and his troop of misfits work night and day to not only avenge his brother's untimely death, but also save his original target, the sorceress who wants nothing more than to escape Memnon's grasp herself.
Even though Johnson had to go through three months of martial arts training, sword fight in fierce sandstorms and dodge gigantic flames during the film's production, the action required in "The Scorpion King" wasn't a challenge for the wrestling superstar. In fact, Johnson did almost all of his own stunts.
"I had two great stunt guys but for the most part I did all my own stunts," Johnson says. "The only exception was the sandstorm scene where I'm jumping off a horse and beheading a guy. I didn't do that cause I couldn't jump off a horse, or jump on one for that matter. That's about it."
Horses weren't the only obstacle Johnson faced while filming "The Scorpion King," either. While his career in the WWF made the fight sequences seem like a breeze, a great deal of the movie features Johnson interacting with a camel-- something the WWF never prepared him for. Although learning to ride a camel was a challenge in itself for the 6'5'' tall superstar, acting besides one proved to be more difficult that he ever imagined.
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