Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson comments on receiving his first Golden Globe nomination

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson earned his first-ever Golden Globe nomination on Monday, finally receiving major awards recognition after starring in more than 60 films. Johnson’s role as MMA fighter Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine is the performance that secured the nomination.

While speaking to hollywoodreporter.com, Johnson commented on hearing the news…

“Today has been very surreal. I sleep in airplane mode on my phone and keep it by my bed. I get up, and of course, I know the nominations are happening, but I also know that I got to get up with the babies at about 6:05 a.m. So I take it off airplane mode and start to get up. I’m getting ready to go wake up babies and I just hear one buzz. I went, ‘Oh, I got one text. That can’t be good.’ I grabbed my phone, and I see that my first text is from Ryan Coogler. I went, ‘Well, he’s not texting me to tell me, ‘Hey, I’m sorry.’’ So I opened up that text and he said ‘Congratulations, brother.’ Then come to find out that the one buzz I got wound up being just the indicator that I had about 250 texts. But Ryan broke the news to me.”

Johnson also commented on what the nomination means to him…

“A few things. One of them is the importance of listening to the little voice that sits behind your rib cage, that at times whispers to you, and at times pounds on your chest to say that you can do more, and there is more, and it can be scary. And it might be scary because it will require you to step out of a comfort zone. And when things are good, you don’t want to step out of that zone, because it’s going good.

But there was more: I wanted to really push and challenge myself and chase that challenge. I had something very special to me, which was the story. It’s been a long go with The Smashing Machine: seven years ago is when I first met Benny [Safdie] about this. So it’s been over half a decade to get this going and so, it represents believing in and listening to that little voice, and also doing the work, even when it’s scary, and surrounding yourself with like-minded people who are chasing the challenge as well. That would be Benny, Emily and Kazu [Hiro], who helped with this transformation every day.”