SOLID AS A ROCK IS 'BEACHES' DEVOTEE HOLLYWOOD'S NEXT ACTION HERO?

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

The Rock likes ``Rocky.''

Well, duh! It kinda figures that a man who made his fortune in the ring should dig a flick about an underdog Philadelphia palooka battling his way to glory ... even though he would barely have been a pebble when the 1976 best-picture winner came out.

And it makes a certain sense that the wrestler-turned-actor looking to be the next big action star should take a shine to ``Raiders of the Lost Ark''; the ``Terminator'' movies, starring bodybuilder-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger; and ``Star Wars.''

The Rock, who stars in ``The Scorpion King,'' is a cinema hound. The Rock has diverse tastes.

So says Dwayne Johnson, 29, the wrestler frequently known as The Rock.

``I've always been a big fan of a great story as well,'' he says. ``I go from being a big fan of 'Rocky' to the 'Godfather' series to 'Honeysuckle Rose' with Willie Nelson to 'It's a Wonderful Life' and 'Beaches.' ''

``Beaches''? As in that 1988 Bette Midler/Barbara Hershey weepfest? The ultimate chick flick? The Rock likes ``Beaches''?

``I can't get it out of my mind,'' confesses The Rock. ``I know: typical Rock movies, just what you'd think The Rock would like.''

Not that anyone short of an armored car would even try to suggest what The Rock should and shouldn't be inserting into his DVD player. But the man with the open-toed shoes sipping bottled water in a Beverly Hills-area hotel suite is not, despite his considerable size, the trash-talking ass-kicker he portrays in his World Wrestling Federation bouts. The Rock keeps it humble.

Which isn't necessarily an easy thing to accomplish when the merchandise empire you've spawned has seen you transformed into more than 25 action figures and 10 video games.

``Man, this is humbling,'' he says. ``I just saw the 'Scorpion King' comic book for the first time, and it's, like, surreal. I get, like, goofy emotional.''

The Rock is not - and has never been - a muscle-bound prima donna, says Jim Ross, senior vice president of talent for the WWF, the man who brought The Rock to wrestling. ``Dwayne Johnson is very unaffected by The Rock's success,'' says Ross.

``I don't know how good this movie is going to be, but knowing how detail-oriented he is and his businesslike approach to things, I really won't be surprised if he delivers,'' Ross continues. ``Sometimes people are almost destined for greatness in the things they do. He's a winner and a damned good human being.''

A former defensive tackle at the University of Miami, the 6-foot-5, 250- pound Rock is both the son and grandson of professional wrestlers. He was recruited by the WWF and became, at age 26, the youngest WWF world champion. During his wrestling tenure, he has coined as many nicknames (the People's Champion, the Brahma Bull) and catch phrases (``If you smell what the Rock is cookin'...'') as T-shirts.

He has also shown a sense of humor, cooking with Martha Stewart, singing and donning drag during his first hosting stint on ``Saturday Night Live.''

Whether he is also a legitimate movie star is yet to be determined.

When the creators of ``The Mummy Returns'' decided to create a spinoff movie revolving around the character of Scorpion King - played by The Rock in basically a cameo - they didn't envision a new Ah-nold. Their prototype was a little wackier.

``I wanted the ability to be a guy my size pulling off Jackie Chan-esque kinds of moves, but not to the extent that there are 100 things going on at one time,'' says The Rock. ``One punch, boom, that's it, mixed in with the fight with (co-star) Michael Clarke Duncan where I'm throwing a box and throwing a chicken.

``I think we've created a new action star, with that type of ability that's real enough that people can put their finger on. Like, 'Wow! That can happen. Maybe I can't kick ass like The Rock, but, man, that's great.' ''

Make no mistake, what you'll see on screen is not a kinder, gentler Rock. In the comic-book-turned-celluloid known as ``Scorpion King,'' The Rock's character takes out half of ancient Egypt with arrows, swords, knives and anything else he can lay his beefy hands on. He also gets a bit buffoonish, even to the point of getting particularly creative when he's up to his neck in sand facing a swarm of ants. And, oh, yes, we do see that famed raised right eyebrow, when Mathayus, the Akkadian assassin played by The Rock, gets catapulted into a Gomorrah harem. (Don't ask.)

It was the persona of the self-spoofing Rock that drew director Chuck Russell to ``The Scorpion King.'' Russell had seen The Rock hosting ``Saturday Night Live'' and sensed that The Rock could roll.

``I had no idea who he was, and I'm not particularly a wrestling fan,'' said Russell. ``He was charming, he was handsome, and he was as funny as any celebrity I had seen do the show. There hadn't been someone new in action drama in five to 10 years. I wanted to find out who this guy was and learn more about him.''

Russell credits himself with a nose for developing not-yet-discovered talent, having directed Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz in ``The Mask'' and Vanessa Williams in ``Eraser''

So, is The Rock in that kind of company?

``There is that thing that, for lack of a better term, we call star quality,'' says Russell. ``He is very charming, and he has a very dangerous edge about him, and that's part of what makes him fascinating. He is authentically a good guy, and I think that comes through. He's someone you can root for.''

Action and mayhem The Rock can handle, usually without a stunt double. For the scenes in which he had to display ``a sense of poignancy,'' The Rock worked with Santa Monica acting coach Larry Moss, who had worked with Helen Hunt on ``As Good as It Gets'' and Duncan on ``The Green Mile.'' Like Russell, Moss was largely un-Rock initiated when he took the assignment. And like Russell, the acting coach is now a fan.

``Now they're talking about him being the next Arnold (Schwarzenegger) and those are big shoes to fill,'' says Moss. ``But he's a sweetheart. He's incredibly focused and smart. He really wanted to be a good actor, and would do whatever he had to do to become that.''

The Rock's limited acting experience was only one hurdle faced by ``The Scorpion King'' team. Between the rush to complete filming to beat a potential Screen Actors Guild strike and juggling The Rock's schedule so he could perform his WWF duties on his nonshooting days, it was a hectic three months.

Now, on the brink of a new kind of additional stardom, The Rock says he has no difficulty keeping perspective. He and his wife Dany became the parents of a daughter, Simone, shortly after filming wrapped a year ago. And the lean, pre-Rock empire years aren't too distant a memory.

``I just always remember that six years ago, I was still sleeping on a (expletive) stained mattress that I got out of a Dumpster. So I'll never forget that kind of stuff,'' he says. ``I'm always remembering that's what I've had to go through to get here, what I know I'm going to have to go through to get where I want to go.''

excavating a legend

History Channel goes in search of the Scorpion King

Every cinematic second of the new film ``The Scorpion King'' is based on strictly researched and archaeologically verified historical fact.

OK, so maybe not. But researchers contend that, not only did a King Scorpion actually exist in ancient Egypt, he may have contributed more to the development of that culture's civilization than anybody had previously imagined.

Airing April 23 on the History Channel, less than a week after the fictionalized movie hits the multiplexes, ``The Real Scorpion King'' is a journey into Egyptian tombs with archaeologists John Darnell of Yale University and Gunter Dreyer. Edward Herrmann narrates the documentary and wrestler-turned-actor The Rock - star of Universal's ``The Scorpion King'' - hosts.

Among the suppositions put forth by Darnell and Dreyer:

King Scorpion may have been the first ruler of Egypt, long before the reign of King Menes, whom historians have long acknowledged as being the king of the first dynasty.

King Scorpion's tomb might have been an architectural prototype for the tombs that would evolve into the pyramids.

If they prove to be hieroglyphs, a bunch of postage-stamp-size tags discovered in King Scorpion's tomb may indicate that the practice of writing developed under his reign - some 200 years before the generally acknowledged birth of writing.

``There has been a lot of agreement and enthusiasm within the community of Egyptologists and archaeologists over these discoveries,'' says executive producer Nancy Dubuc, the History Channel's director of programming. ``More enthusiasm over this than controversy.''

The first indication that a King Scorpion existed came at the end of the 19th century at an excavation in Hierakonpolis. The Narmer Palette, discovered at the site, depicted a king not mentioned in ancient Egyptian histories and a ceremonial macehead now called the Scorpion Macehead shows a king of the Upper Kingdom identified with the symbols of a rosette and a scorpion.

During his excavation of Abydos, where the tombs of several first-dynasty kings are located, Dreyer discovered an enormous mud brick tomb. Although the tomb had been ransacked, and its mummy was missing, archaeologists did find an ivory scepter - which, they maintain, indicates royalty - and multiple pottery shards containing the image of the scorpion. According to Dreyer, the tomb and its contents suggest that King Scorpion was real and not a mythical god depicted in hieroglyphs.

However, nobody is suggesting that the king was the all-purpose warrior depicted by The Rock in the film, and, even with The Rock's participation, the concurrent timing of the documentary and the film is ``sheer coincidence,'' according to Dubuc.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Can `Scorpion King' make this wrestling rolling stone a rock star?

(2) no caption (Dwayne Johnson - The Rock)

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer

(3) no caption (man riding a camel)

Box:

excavating a legend (see text)