Former Wrestling superstar turned action movie hero Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock finally gets to take on his dream role of mythical hero Hercules. Directed by Brett Ratner and showcasing an eclectic global cast the sword and sandals epic fuses legend with CGI and real hulking muscles. Here’s what Dwayne had t say about the project during a recent London press conference.

Q. What did feel like on that first day when you became Hercules?

It was amazing being him. When I was able to put everything the hair, the makeup, the armour, it was an incredible feeling. The second part to that was stepping on set for the very first time: our first day of shooting. We opened up with a very spectacular scene on our very first day with one of our ensemble battles, and it was an epic day, and again the second part to how gratifying it was for me was, as an actor, was when everyone else stepped into their role. Watching these guys here really transform themselves and lock-and-load. A lot of times in acting, you have a shift-and-click moment when you get into a character, and these guys just blew me away.

Q. Why were you so determined to get this role?

Well, I’ve grown up loving and admiring Hercules. There’s that iconic moment where Hercules breaks the chains from the pillars, and screams, “I am Hercules!”, which, for me as a kid, was always a mesmerising moment. I remember having a poster of Steven Reeves in the old days, when those posters looked painted at that time, and I was always inspired by it. Hercules was the very first movie I had enquired about when I first got to Hollywood in 1999-2000, and that time, I didn’t have the ability to green-light anything. Then it came around years later, so I sit in front of you guys today, very grateful for the role and grateful to have a director on-board and certainly grateful to these actors.

Q. Did this ask of anything different for you in terms of physical dedication?

It did, it was the most physically challenging and demanding role. I started prepping at about six months out, had a great fitness coach and diet coach and wanted to come in as Hercules! Brett and I spoke a couple of years ago when we first met about the project, and we said that you get one crack at Hercules, especially when you wanna make a movie with all these actors that’s a defining movie because there’s been so many Hercules in the past; film, TV and cartoons, books and everything like that, so we had an opportunity, and I felt that I was gonna work as hard as I possibly could, transform my body and bring it in at a certain peak. But, I do wanna give a lot of credit by the way to Ingrid because her transformation was incredible! In her wardrobe, unlike a lot of ours, a lot more of her body was showing, all of her stomach and all of her legs, and when you come in at a certain physical point, when you reach that physical peak, you have to maintain it for five or six months. And that is the most difficult thing to do because everything has to match from day one to day ninety-five or whatever it was, so, as Brett was saying, we’d be shooting these scenes at three or four o’clock in the morning, and everyone was so tired and freezing, and I look of into the corner and Ingrid would be in the corner doing exercises, everything she possible could! So, I give her and all of us a lot of credit. For all of us, including Ian, it was the most physically challenging movie we have done!

Hercules London Photocall images below:

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