Dwayne Johnson Explains Extreme Weight Loss

Last week actor Dwyane Johnson stunned onlookers at the Venice Film Festival with his drastic weight loss [click here if you missed that].

Don't worry, it's for a new film role...

From Variety

Having earned raves for bulking up to play the wrestler Mark Kerr in his MMA fighting prime for “The Smashing Machine,” Dwayne Johnson is about to undertake another radical transformation. He’s shedding pounds to portray a ” whimsical, eccentric 70-something year-old” called Chicken Man in “Lizard Music.”

The film, which will reunite Johnson with “The Smashing Machine” director Benny Safdie, is an acting challenge that the Rock jumped at the chance to pull off.

“Benny pitched me this after,” Johnson said during a career retrospective talk at the Toronto Film Festival on Monday where “The Smashing Machine” will screen. “And after about 45 minutes, this pitch ended and I said, ‘I am your Chicken Man.'”

Johnson, who had shed much of the 30 pounds of muscle he packed on as Kerr, still looked like he could benchpress a Humvee.

“I still have a long ways to go,” he acknowledged.

“I’m so excited to get a chance to hopefully transform again like I was able to do in ‘Smashing Machine,'” Johnson added. “[It means] eating less chicken.”