Dwayne Johnson Details “Really Going Through It” Amid Divorce From Ex-Wife Dany Garcia

For Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a divorce wasn’t in his game plan.

However, everything changed in 2007 when he and Dany Garcia broke up after 16 years of marriage. And for the Smashing Machine actor, it was difficult to see not just his relationship end but seeing how the family dynamic would change for his daughter Simone, now 24.

“When you guys get married, as a few of you may know, you sign up for the long haul, but then it doesn’t always work out like that,” Dwayne shared during the Nov. 6 episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast. “And then it rocks you like it rocked me. And we had a baby, and what kind of father was I going to be?”

As he navigated these changes, he began to struggle with his mental health.

“At that time I was really going through it,” he reflected. “That was another bout of depression.”

And the challenges in his personal life led the Fast Five star—who wed Lauren Hashian in 2019 and welcomed daughters Jasmine, 9, and Tiana, 6—to seek out happier roles, including family movies like The Game Plan and Tooth Fairy.

“I was trying to figure my stuff out, and that was the only thing that I really wanted to do artistically,” he explained. “I didn’t want anything that was going to challenge me to rip my guts out, I wanted stuff that has a happy ending, and so that’s what that was.”