Increasingly, celebrities are drawing a hard line between their public and personal lives. But then again, the status quo has never worked for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, whose personality is only matched in size by his deltoids.
In a new Esquire Q&A, the American treasure makes the rare move of opening up about his longtime girlfriend, Lauren Hashian, and straight up demands that writer Scott Raab include it in his piece.
"I've lived with my longtime girlfriend, Lauren Hashian, going on, like, eight, nine years now. She's a singer-songwriter," Johnson tells the magazine. "We spend a lot of time with my daughter in Florida, Simone, who's 13. We do these stories and we talk so much about the business end, the success end, but then Lauren isn't mentioned and my daughter isn't mentioned. I always like making sure we find the balance and my home life is in there and Lauren Hashian is in there and my daughter is in there."
Okay, they've been mentioned now. Please don't pull out the Rock Bottom on us.
Johnson and Hashian have been dating since 2007, the same year he separated from his ex-wife, Dany Garcia, who is the mother of Simone. While Hashian rarely appears on her man's popular Instagram account and often doesn't pose with him at premieres, the modern family is all clearly on good terms, as Hashian, Simone, Garcia, and her new husband all accompanied The Rock at his TCL Chinese Theater handprint signing last month.
Hashian has had her own brushes with fame. For starters, her father is Sib Hashian, the drummer for '70s and '80s rock band Boston. In 2005, the singer-songwriter was a finalist on R U That Girl, a competition reality show hosted by TLC's Chilli and T-Boz.
Johnson tells Esquire that he attributes his success to his close family: "With all the cool s--t and success that I've been lucky enough to get? That doesn't happen unless the home life is solid," he says.
And indeed, it's been quite a year of "cool s--t and success" for The Rock. He has two films — Furious 7 and San Andreas — that are two of 2015's top 15 highest grossing movies so far. And his newest project,
HBO's Ballers, premiered to excellent reviews.
Asked whether he prefers movies over wrestling, the former WWE champion's answer may surprise you.
"Wrestling is intimate. You can reach out and touch the wrestlers. I don't get that connection in movies, but the impact is so much greater. You're able to craft a longer career in movies," he says. "In wrestling, there's a shelf life, and some wrestlers don't pay attention to the shelf life. Mickey Rourke's character in The Wrestler — that was my dad, that was my uncles, that was so many members of my family. It was the only thing they knew. And then they would end up wrestling for a hundred bucks, go to autograph signings for two hundred bucks."
While it's all wine and roses now, Johnson reflects on the grittier start of his wrestling career.
"I think wrestling for $40 a night and eating at the Waffle House three times a day, wrestling every weekend at a flea market, then at a state fair or a car dealership or in barns, 'blade jobs,' where I cut my forehead with razor blades," he says. "These days I never question, 'Oh, do I deserve it? Am I a real man?' No."
By Smartywolrd
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