WHAT’S COOKIN’?

The Rock Reveals Role That Inspired His Shocking New Bod

The actor will play an elderly man who befriends a chicken.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s new look isn’t just for a change of pace, the actor revealed Monday. A week after he debuted his dramatically slimmed down body at the Venice Film Festival, where he was promoting his first dramatic starring role in biopic The Smashing Machine, Johnson, 53, said the new slim-down is for his next film project. “It’s out there now, big news is I’m teaming up with Benny Safdie again and we’re gonna make a film called Lizard Music, which is based off of a novel written by Daniel Pinkwater,” he told an audience at Toronto International Film Festival, per Entertainment Weekly. Safdie wrote and directed Smashing Machine, so Johnson said he was sold on his pitch about the children’s novel as soon as Smashing Machine wrapped. “The role that I will play is a very whimsical and eccentric 70-something-year-old man called the Chicken Man, and his best friend is a 70-something-year-old chicken,” he said, explaining that he’d tapered down his buff appearance to play the character. Johnson added, “I’m so excited because I get a chance to hopefully transform again like I was able to do with Smashing Machine.” Johnson’s performance in the biopic about Mark Kerr is already generating Oscar buzz.