IN A RADICAL career detour, The Rock has been losing weight. The actor recently turned heads at the Venice Film Festival by looking noticeably slimmer, revealing that the weight loss is part of his prep for his next film, Lizard Music.
Directed by The Smashing Machine’s Benny Safdie, Lizard Music will see The Rock play an eccentric 75-year-old known as ‘The Chicken Man’. There aren’t many 75 year olds around with rigs like The Rock’s, so it makes sense that the actor would try to shed some muscle.
“I’ve been dieting,” Johnson told Variety. “Happy to not be carrying all the weight. I’m able to tuck in my shirt now… I don’t look pregnant so it’s all good.”
The most interesting quote from the interview, however, came when The Rock was asked how thin he’s aiming to get. “Think Clint Eastwood at 75. Sinewy muscles, he’s lean, but it feels good,” he said.
We knew The Rock was going to lose some weight, but we didn’t know he was aiming for something so extreme. It’s difficult to imagine the Rock looking anything like Clint Eastwood, who, while still cutting an in-shape figure in his seventies in films like Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino, could hardly be described as having lean and sinewy muscles.
In The Rock’s defence, it’s difficult to imagine him boasting any physique that isn’t bulging and bursting at the seams. We simply don’t know how The Rock would look skinny, because there’s no reference point. Maybe he really does intend to get as thin as Eastwood. Even so, that will be a Herculean task for a man who has spent three decades trying to be as big as possible.
Can The Rock pull it off? Only time will tell.
