I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball.

Today, I can smell what the rock is cooking.

Finally.

Now, if you were to do a family feud-style man on the street pole, like if you just walked up to people and asked him, name the biggest movie star the last 25 years, I bet you, that was a terrible Steve Harvey, by the way, I bet you'd get enough people answering Dwayne the Rock Johnson,

that your family wouldn't get a strike if that was your answer.

In fact, I'd guess he'd wind up being the number one answer.

And I'm going to say that the man who's arguably our biggest active star

has also, inarguably, been the most misused.

He's usually a body first that makes everything else about him his humor and his charisma, his

chill. All of those things have to compete with what a mountain range he is. But this year, Johnson's body is once again the centerpiece of a new movie.

It's called The Smashing Machine.

And for once, it's what's going on inside that body that's fascinating.

He plays the mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr, this man who is built like the Pentagon paid for him.

But he plays Kerr, Dwayne Johnson does, in a way that might get at the real humanity and even tragedy of the actor playing.

This all made me want to talk to my friend Sam Anderson, who wrote a really revealing profile of Dwayne Johnson in a recent New York Times magazine issue.

Sam, welcome to Cannonball.

Thank you. Glad to be back.

I guess I'm going to start by asking a pretty straightforward question.

You're one of my favorite writers of profiles.

Thank you.

Bar none.

You have written about Laurie Anderson, Rick Steves,

...