Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Reveals Mother Once Attempted Suicide

The Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle star just opened up about a painful moment from his past.

Early on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson shared a photo on Instagram from the set of his TV series Ballers, which showed him opening a can of beer in a graveyard. Explaining that his character was toasting the memory of his brother, who had taken his own life, Johnson soon addressed the topic of suicide, noting that, "We've all been there on some level or another."

Johnson then revealed that his own mother had attempted suicide when the actor was 15 years old. "She got outta the car on Interstate 65 in Nashville and walked into oncoming traffic," he recalled. "Big rigs and cars swerving outta the way not to hit her. I grabbed her and pulled her back on the gravel shoulder of the road."

He added, "What's crazy about that suicide attempt is to this day, she has no recollection of it whatsoever. Probably best she doesn't."

While he noted that he didn't enjoy shooting that particular Ballers scene, Johnson told his followers that it reminded him that "we always gotta do our best to really pay attention when people are in pain."

"Help 'em thru it, get 'em talkin' about the struggle and remind 'em that they're not alone," he went on. "We got lucky that day when I was 15 and that ain't always the case."

As E! News noted, Johnson's spoken out about his mother's suicide attempt before in the past. In a 2015 interview for OWN's Oprah's Master Class, Johnson recalled, "I knew that my parents were going through some really, really tough times in terms of their marriage."

"I'll never forget it. It was probably about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. We were at a restaurant, the three of us, and they got into it. They got into a very big fight—not physical, but just really loud arguing," Johnson said, adding that he followed his parents in his own car after they left the restaurant.

"I already had my license at that time at 15. We're driving down I-65—I-65 is a major interstate that runs through Tennessee—and I'm watching them drive in front of me. Their car starts swerving, and I can clearly see that they are arguing. My old man makes a hard right, and he gets on the shoulder, on the gravel road," Johnson remembered. Recounting seeing his mother got out of the car, Johnson said, "She had a glazed look over her eyes that I had never seen before."

Describing what happened next, Johnson continued, "She walks right into the middle of I-65, and continues to walk down into oncoming traffic. My heart stopped."

As cars attempted to avoid hitting her, Johnson said he "grabbed her and wrestled her over to the side of the road." He added, "I don't remember what I said to her. I remember she didn't say a thing."

Johnson's Instagram post about suicide awareness comes after Hollywood's been rocked by the tragic deaths of stars like Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, who took their own lives in 2017.