“Once we got home, we started bawling,” actor recalls of the day he found out Paul died

Jun 19, 2014 19:39 GMT  ·  By
The Rock says he cried when Paul Walker died, says he was “a beautiful man in a crazy world”
   The Rock says he cried when Paul Walker died, says he was “a beautiful man in a crazy world”

Last November, actor Paul Walker met his untimely end in a one-car crash that also claimed the life of his friend and business partner Roger Rodas. At the time, he was on a break from filming a new installment in the “Fast & Furious” franchise, with his unexpected death sending production into a tailspin for a while.

It also broke the hearts of all the people he was working with, including Dwayne Johnson, aka The Rock. He might still go by that name but, deep down inside, Dwayne is a giant teddy bear with a heard of gold.

He is featured in the latest issue of The Hollywood Reporter with an extensive interview on his impressive career so far, which took him from football star to wrestler and then to the undisputed king of action movies, his troubled years growing up, his family and his friends.

Paul was one of the best, The Rock says. He remembers he found out about his death while in the car, driving home.

“I was driving with Lauren [Hashian, his live-in girlfriend] when she immediately turned very quiet and was looking at me, studying, wondering if I knew,” he says.

“I pulled over and looked at my messages and had a moment where I just caught my breath. We said a prayer right then to give his daughter strength — because we had talked about our daughters. That's what we would talk about. Both of us were divorced, and we talked about the power of being a dad and the strong connection of a dad and his girl. Then once we got home, we started bawling,” The Rock continues.

Walker was more than just a popular actor, he explains. Fans already know that Walker was involved in several charities, always eager to put his name to a cause, but only if he thought it would serve that cause better. Otherwise, he did his best not to draw attention to himself or to the fact that he was this huge movie star who raked in millions for his work.

“He was a beautiful man, and in that crazy world, that's really something,” The Rock explains, echoing statements from other of Paul’s co-stars, like Vin Diesel and Tyrese Gibson, and from Paul’s family.

Johnson says that, shortly after Walker’s death, they were all summoned for a meeting with NBCUniversal vice chairman Ron Meyer to discuss the future of the “Fast & Furious” franchise. As fans learned later, it was decided that the film that Walker never completed would be finished by using his brothers as stand-ins and would be released with some delay.

His character will probably be killed off or written out.

“I had one day of shooting left,” The Rock says. “And we still have one day left, which we'll shoot in a month or two.”