It’s hard to believe that Dwayne Johnson received his first Golden Globes nomination on Monday after starring in over 60 movies during his decades-spanning career. But his dramatic role of Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine finally got the actor some awards recognition.

To Johnson, however, the nomination means more than just recognition. “I think the nomination represents the fight in everybody, especially with addictions and those demons that you battle,” Johnson tells The Hollywood Reporter on Monday in the interview below. “Mark Kerr had it all and lost everything, and has since become sober. He did overdose twice. Life is good because he’s sober and because he made it. And not everyone is that lucky. That’s the movie that we wanted to make: a nod to those who fight.”

The Smashing Machine, written and directed by Safdie, follows former amateur wrestler and MMA fighter Kerr (Johnson), alongside his girlfriend Dawn Staples, played by Emily Blunt.

Johnson was nominated in the best performance by a male actor in a drama category, alongside Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams), Oscar Isaac (Frankenstein), Michael B. Jordan (Sinners), Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) and Jeremy Allen White (Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere). Blunt also received a nod for her performance in the best performance by a female actor in a supporting role category.

What does this recognition mean to you?

A few things. One of them is the importance of listening to the little voice that sits behind your rib cage, that at times whispers to you, and at times pounds on your chest to say that you can do more, and there is more, and it can be scary. And it might be scary because it will require you to step out of a comfort zone. And when things are good, you don’t want to step out of that zone, because it’s going good.

But there was more: I wanted to really push and challenge myself and chase that challenge. I had something very special to me, which was the story. It’s been a long go with The Smashing Machine: seven years ago is when I first met Benny [Safdie] about this. So it’s been over half a decade to get this going and so, it represents believing in and listening to that little voice, and also doing the work, even when it’s scary, and surrounding yourself with like-minded people who are chasing the challenge as well. That would be Benny, Emily and Kazu [Hiro], who helped with this transformation every day.

On top of that, I think the nomination represents the fight in everybody, especially with addictions and those demons that you battle. Mark Kerr had it all and lost everything, and then has since become sober. He did overdose twice. Life is good because he’s sober and because he made it. Not everyone is that lucky. That’s the movie that we wanted to make: a nod to those who fight.

But last week, I thought, “Let me take a tally here.” Over the last years, I’ve lost 15 friends who are all wrestlers and fighters to addiction. Some OD’d, some decided to check out. Life was too hard. It shook me, and then it restabilized me in a way like, “Okay, I’m so happy we made this film.” It is a love letter to those that I just talked to you about. That’s why this nomination means so much.

For this role, you went back to your roots of wrestling. What did that mean for your emotionally and physically?

Being a pro wrestler enabled me with a few things. I had a good sense of when I got into a ring or a cage for the film. I had a good sense of what we call Ring Generalship, so I have a pretty good knowledge of my presence in the ring. But what I also realized, and this was very sobering, is that there is nothing like pro wrestling and there is nothing like MMA, and how wildly different they actually are. So being a pro wrestler helped me in terms of, I think Ring Generalship and body on body composition.

But the transformation physically, I wound up gaining 32 pounds. It was wild amount of weight that was very hard to carry for three and a half months. Not only that, but there was a certain quality of muscle that I had to gain that allowed me still to move in the ring. Mark Kerr had this very uniquely athletically gifted body. He was massive, muscles everywhere, but he could move like a cheetah, and he was just a very rare human being of a physical specimen, but he was very specific, like his traps and his back and his neck and quads. I’d gained a few pounds and lost a few pounds for some roles, but this was a whole other level, and what wound up becoming very invaluable for me and my performance was Kazu and the 23 prosthetics he created that were the eyes, nose, cauliflower ears, scars, that wound up being such an invaluable part of the transformation.

The emotional part of it was understanding that I was going to embody somebody else’s skin and live as Mark Kerr for months. What I realized now that the process is over and behind me, is that the physical transformation was very hard and difficult gaining that weight. On day one, what your weight is and whatever you have put on your body, you have to hold on to that for the next four months. And then, of course, the prosthetics. There was a vocal transformation, but then the emotional transformation was the most difficult, because you realize very quickly — and Emily and I both went through this — that you’re playing two human beings who are still alive, and the legacy of their lives for the past 20 years has been this documentary. They’re not in the middle of the ring with their arms high winning the championship and then went on to greatness. It was a hard life.

At the end of that documentary, Mark loses everything, and then she, in a way, loses too. That was hard to come to set every day, but a challenge. You want to make sure you do right by them and the life they live. But also, we had that opportunity to show that this is 20 years later and, you know what? They did lose everything and they did get a divorce, but they have a beautiful kid. Life is good today.

What’s one fact that would surprise fans about the making of the movie?

I think what surprised people is that the films that anchored our inspiration for The Smashing Machine. One was Raging Bull. The other one was It’s a Wonderful Life. Raging Bull, for the obvious reasons, De Niro and Scorsese, two of the goats. The way Scorsese shot Raging Bull, the fight scenes in the ring were so visceral, and the cameras were right there in a very intimate, jarring way. Then the fight scenes at home were even harder to watch. It was the same thing for mine and Emily’s character, and that’s what Benny wanted to create — these fight scenes in the ring and in the cage; people are going to feel it. But when we get home, and when the domesticated challenges open up between a woman and a man, that is when we really dialed it up, because their relationship was that explosive and volcanic. That’s what you feel in our film. In It’s A Wonderful Life, what George Bailey goes through, and what Mark Kerr goes through in The Smashing Machine is not that dissimilar. From the beginning to the end of both movies, nothing has changed. The only thing that’s changed is the central character’s perspective on life.

See the full list of Golden Globes nominations here.

*Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Productions is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and Eldridge that also owns *The Hollywood Reporter.