Dwayne Johnson says people thought he was a girl when he was a child

To look at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson today, you wouldn’t think he’d be mistaken for anyone but a muscular male.

But the former pro-wrestler-turned-actor revealed in a recent interview that when he was a boy, he often got mistaken for a girl.

“Between the ages of 7 and 11, people thought that I was a little girl … because I had really soft features and I had really soft Afro hair,” Johnson told Willie Geist on his Sunday Sitdown podcast.

In October 2020, Johnson shared a photo of himself at age 7, which also appeared in conjunction with the Willie Geist video interview for Sunday Today. In the tweet caption, he laughs at himself.

“Just drippin’ cool with my buck teeth, aloha shirt and WTF is going on with my afro matted down on one side!?” he said.

During the interview with Geist, Johnson also recalled getting on a school bus for the first time in fifth grade.

“I sit down next to a kid, and within 60 seconds, he goes, ‘Can I ask you something?'” The Rock recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ He goes, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?'”

Johnson didn’t say anything back and joked that he then punched the kid out. But the now 6-foot 5-inch, 260-ish-pound, bald Johnson doesn’t have problems being recognized as a man today.

Johnson also discussed how he had lived in about 13 states by the time he was in high school and how his ex-pro-wrestler father wasn’t thrilled that he decided to become a wrestler himself.

Dwayne Johnson has a new NBC TV show based on his life, from childhood on up. “Young Rock” was recently renewed for a second season.

In March 2021, he shared a few throwback photos of him as a kid with Andre “the Giant” Rene Roussimoff, timed with the “Young Rock” episode featuring the famous wrestler. Johnson joked that Andre might have taken a particular liking to him “because we both had afros.”

Dwayne Douglas Johnson was born in California to his pro wrestler father, Rocky, who was Black, and his mother, Atta, who is Samoan and the adopted daughter of a famous Samoan wrestler. The family moved around for father Rocky’s wrestling gigs. Among the places, Johnson lived as a child were New Zealand, North Carolina, Connecticut, Hawaii, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania.

Here he is with his father in a picture from 1981, posted to Imgur by ChroniclyDope.

He verified the photo above to Huffpost in a tweet.

He was a successful University of Miami football player before transitioning into wrestling as “The Rock” after a pro football career didn’t work out. Johnson had his big acting breaking when he appeared as the Scorpion King in “The Mummy Returns.” Since then he’s become one of the world’s best-paid actors thanks to a series of successful movies including parts in the “Fast and the Furious” franchise, “Jumanji” and its sequel and “Moana.”

As it turns out, he isn’t shy about referring to his feminine side. In an image he posted in 2014 of himself in the ’90s, he refers to himself as a “buff lesbian.”

Today, Johnson gets to love on his own girls. He has a grown daughter from his first marriage and two little girls with his second wife Lauren Hashian. He’s become known for his doting dad ways on social media.

Do you think Dwayne Johnson looked like a girl as a child?