Dwayne Johnson began his professional wrestling career following his father and paternal grandpa’s footsteps. They were famous wrestlers, but no one could have predicted that Johnson would become a Hollywood Celebrity. The Scorpion King was his first big film in the lead role. At the time, everyone knew him as The Rock, and no one in Hollywood thought his true name would garner him any recognition.
Today he is known for his work ethic and respect toward his co-workers. However, The Rock was not always the good guy, his past is filled with larceny and some immoral acts. The actor reveals that he has learned a lot from those incidents, he is not proud of it but no one can change the past.
Dwayne Johnson used to steal high-end clothes and jewelry when he was young
The Rock was not so much of a role model in his teens, he was quite the rule-breaker and got himself into a lot of trouble. It all started when his plans to stay with his father and learn wrestling was crushed. Instead, he had to move into a seedy hotel with his father’s wrestling partner, Bruno Lauer. The duo struck an unusual friendship but Lauer admitted to Vanity Fair that he took advantage of young Johnson.
Johnson’s responsibility was to transport Lauer to his downtown Nashville drinking hunts and to keep them both stocked with anything they need. Johnson picked up some tricks during these hard times, one of them was how to steal in Hawaii. It was mostly high-end apparel back then. The Rock says, “I just didn’t want to wear the same old shorts and T-shirt and flip-flops every day”
In Nashville, young Johnson used the same skills. Bruno Lauer spoke to Vanity Fair about Dwayne Johnson’s stealing habits, he knew about them but chose to ignore them.
“He’ll tell you himself—he was a thief. Bruno, you want some cigarettes? I got you a quart of beer. I got us some hot dogs, some this, some that…. I got me a radio….. Hell, back then I didn’t have any morals either. I was benefiting too!”
Johnson would claim that people gave him the items for free because they admired Lauer or his father, but Lauer knew the reality. The stealing did not go on forever, after a huge incident The Rock gave up on stealing completely. He never stole anything except our hearts of course.
Dwayne Johnson got arrested for stealing warm clothes
Dwayne Johnson’s tale of larceny came to an end when in the fall of 1987 he moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with his parents. Winter was approaching, and Johnson needed warm clothing, so he went out and got some—meaning he stole them.
However this time he got caught, even though The Rock had been detained in Hawaii a couple of times but he always had connections who would get him out. Not this time, the police and law were not that lenient. The actor’s mother had to come to the police station to bail him out. When they went home, his mother sobbed and begged him to never steal ever again. That was the last day he stole something, he says,
“I started caring that night. I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget going to bed going, ‘Of all the shit my mom has been through and that I have been right there watching and witnessing, now I am compounding it with my dumb-ass decisions.’ ”
The actor also opened up about his relationship with his father. He went to his dad and asked him to teach wrestling. The answer was no, but soon his father came around and taught him. He says,
“The irony is I fucking idolized my dad as a boy. I idolized him, man. And obviously, that idealization started to wane over the years. But the older I got, and the more experienced I got, the more I could appreciate his love for me in that limited capacity.”
Even though over time their relationship became better it never got easy. The two never really got together but the actor understood his father and respected him for all his contributions. Somewhere in his heart Johnson knew his father did love him in some capacity.
Source: Vanity Fair
