  Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's second football-themed movie in a year sees him playing a quarterback who finds out he has a daughter he never knew existed in The Game Plan. (Supplied photo)
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Halfway into a phone interview with Dwayne Johnson and it's lights out for the superstar known as The Rock.
The culprit? His 6-year-old daughter, Simone Alexandra, who just flicked off the light-switch in the room. After a moment or two -- in which he informs her that he was just telling me how great she is -- light, and normalcy, are presumably restored. Another crisis averted. And one that nicely underscores -- love it when that happens -- the topic at hand: His role in Disney's The Game Plan as a pro quarterback who discovers he has a precocious daughter (Madison Pettis) he never knew existed, as well as the inescapable fact that, no matter how wealthy and powerful you are, there are no quick keys for parenting.
"When there's a problem and she's crying or upset, there's no assistant or security guard or agent to help -- that's when I become Daddy," says the 35-year-old wrestler-turned-actor, who separated from his wife of 10 years, Dany Garcia Johnson, in June.
It's a hard-learned lesson for his onscreen character, Joe "The King" Kingman, a skirt-chasing sports icon who's already deeply in love with someone: himself. For Johnson, the parallels between fact and fiction are not difficult to see, given his success, pre-and-post fatherhood. "I've lived both sides," he says. "I was not quite as arrogant as Joe, but I was very selfish."
The Game Plan marks the second football-themed movie for Johnson in a year. Last fall, he starred in the underdog pigskin drama The Gridiron Gang.
Certainly football has been kinder to him on the big screen than it ever was on the field. His own ambitions to enter the sport professionally were sidelined early on when, while playing at the University of Miami he suffered a back injury and later failed to make the cut to the NFL. Still wanting to tackle the game, though, he headed to Calgary where he was a Stampeder for a few months in 1995 before being sacked.
Recalling that period, he says, "I would never ever change anything, as awful as it was, in all sincerity, to be making $250 a week, eating spaghetti every night and living with five other guys in a two-bedroom apartment."
After all, if he had become a star Stamp, he may have never left the CFL or quit football to pursue wrestling. The latter seemed pre-destined for him -- his father and grandfather had been wrestlers. Yet few could have forecast the impression Johnson would have as his eyebrow-cocking, catchphrase-spouting alter-ego The Rock. Or that, a scant 10 years later, he would now have all but retired from the ring to concentrate instead on a muscular film career. If he's made back-to-back football flicks now, it doesn't reflect regret, he says, "It's just a coincidence. The material was good."
Besides, in the case of The Game Plan, it also gives him a chance at extending his reach beyond his action-thirsty fanbase. "I wanted to do a comedy with broad-based appeal. It had all the elements."
Including the Mouse House's seal of approval. "It's a powerful studio and a powerful brand."
Hence, in February he'll reteam with the studio for a redo of Escape from Witch Mountain, based on the 1975 family adventure. "It's a huge action comedy."
Also on tap? A role as Agent 23 opposite Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway in the remake of Get Smart, directed by Peter Segal. And he is mulling playing Capt. Marvel in Segal's film version of Shazam!, based on the old comic book and Saturday morning live-action series.
Says Johnson, "I'm very fortunate and blessed."
Science-fiction flick finally ready to Rock
Last year at Cannes, audiences smelled what The Rock had cooked.
And they loathed it.
Now two years after it was filmed, the much-delayed apocalyptic science-fiction satire Southland Tales will be released in November. It's the sophomore effort from Richard Kelly, who wrote and directed the cult fave Donnie Darko.
"It was the wrong audience for the film, in my opinion," Dwayne (a.k.a. The Rock) Johnson says of the critical lambasting Tales received in France.
(One reviewer called it "about the biggest, ugliest mess" he'd ever seen.)
Since then, Kelly has retooled and tightened the movie. The theatrical cut will reportedly be shorter, boast more visual effects, but still feature Johnson as an amnesiac action star experiencing the end of days. Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mandy Moore, Kevin Smith and Justin Timberlake co-star.
"When I read the script, I was just blown away. I read it from start to finish and I have a short attention span," Johnson says.
But will the result leave filmgoers satisfied or just confused? Johnson sounds like he's hoping for a bit of both.
He says when people ask him what the film meant, he tells them, "It means exactly you think it means. You're not wrong."
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