The Rock makes heartbreaking confession: "My mom tried to take her life"

The Rock shared a heartbreaking story about her mother in a recent interview about his life and career. Ata Johnson tried to take her own life when Rocky was a teenager, before things began to work out for their family.

Speaking to Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter, Dwayne Johnson opened up about his teenage years and the struggles they faced as a family of two since he and her mother was estranged with Rocky Johnson. There was a time wherein they got evicted from their apartment, and Ata tried to get herself run over by traffic before a 15-year-old Rocky saved her.

These hardships, including the box office failure of The Smashing Machine, helped The Rock realize that he always wanted to tell stories, which he is planning to do with his movie career moving forward.

"Even though we didn't do well (at the box office), or as well as we wanted to, it was okay because it just represented the thing I did for me. Maybe it was because I was an only child, but all the stuff that I had experienced as a kid and as a teenager, eviction, my mom tried to take her life two months after we got evicted and I pulled her out of the middle of the highway, a whole bunch of stuff happened, I had rejected exploring any of that on film. For years I would do these other films that were big and fun, 'Jumanji' and 'Moana,' with a happy ending, and I love that still. But what (The Smashing Machine) represented was, ‘Oh wait, I can do the thing I love, which is to tell stories, but I could also take all this stuff and have a place to put it,'" Rocky said.

Amid all the failures he endured, The Rock ended up being a successful WWE Superstar, becoming one of the greatest to ever do it in such a short amount of time. He then conquered Hollywood by becoming a box office king, but he's now planning to play roles that have depth and story.

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The Rock's next role will be a mafia boss

After playing Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine, The Rock is set to portray an old mafia boss for a gangster movie directed by Martin Scorsese. He will work alongside other actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Emily Blunt, as reported by Variety.

While his role as Kerr required him to add 30 pounds of muscle, this mafia boss role needed him to lose a lot of weight. It's one of the reasons why Rocky slimmed down during the press tour for The Smashing Machine.