There’s a scene in The Smashing Machine in which Dwayne Johnson told writer-director Benny Safdie he needed to get punched in the face.

Opening in theatres Oct. 3, the movie casts Johnson as pioneering MMA fighter Mark Kerr as he rose in the sport while battling his own demons with drug and alcohol abuse.

“There’s a brutal fight in the film where Dwayne said to me, ‘I have to get punched in the face,'” filmmaker Benny Safdie told Postmedia in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival. “And when it came time to shoot the scene, I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to remind him,’ but he said it again.”

To play Kerr, Johnson wanted to craft his most realistic performance yet. So in addition to getting whacked for real, he packed on more muscle than he ever had before to comple

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