Dwayne Johnson's 2019 MTV Movie & TV Awards speech tells his inspiring Hollywood story
"I wasn't going to conform to Hollywood; Hollywood was going to conform to me."
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson received the Generation Award Monday night at the 2019 MTV Movie & TV Awards, and his speech was exactly what we've come to expect from the inspiring icon.
After thanking his house full of "strong-a--" women at home (his fiancee Lauren Hashian and his three daughters, Jasmine, Simone and Tiana), Johnson said the award for his decades in the entertainment business was all due to the fans.
"You are the reason I'm getting this," he said, before jumping into a classic "Rock" lesson that left the audience in chills.
"The most powerful thing we can be is ourselves," he said.
Johnson said when he first got to Hollywood, "They didn't know what the hell to do with me. I mean I was half-black, half-Samoan, 6-foot 4, 275-pound pro wrestler."
He added that after they told him he needed to lose weight and "be somebody different," even "stop calling yourself 'The Rock,'" he made a choice to just be true to himself and do what he loved.
"I wasn't going to conform to Hollywood; Hollywood was going to conform to me," he added. "So, Hollywood conformed to me, and here I am getting the Generation Award."
He added a curse after that, but it's The Rock, so we'll let it slide.
"What you saw tonight, that's who I am. I'm proudly half-black, half-Samoan and I wanted to play those cultures," he said.
But The Rock wasn't done "cooking" up a life lesson for the audience.
"That's not enough," he added about being your most authentic self. "You have to recognize the joy and the responsibility of bringing everybody with you."
He closed with, "You do that by being kind, being compassionate and being inclusive. You do that by straight up just being good to people, because that matters."
