Strange Things About The Rock And Lauren Hashian's Relationship
Sorry to everyone who was still hoping they had a chance: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is officially a married man. The former pro-wrestler tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend, Lauren Hashian, in a private Hawaiian ceremony on August 18, 2019 ... but it was a long time coming. This celeb pairing has been together for over a decade and share two young kiddos. In fact, most fans probably thought the couple was already married.
Nuptials or not, Johnson and Hashian — who's the daughter of the late Boston drummer Sib Hashian — seem as head-over-heels as ever. In a July 2019 Instagram post from the Hobbs & Shaw premiere, Johnson wrote, "I set the tone and tempo, but she'll always be the life anchor who makes this whole thing happen and shine." (Cue the chorus of "awws.")
These newlyweds are undoubtedly one of those rare couples that have endured Hollywood, but their relationship is not the most traditional. Whether it's working closely with an ex or starting a family before exchanging their vows, these two have done things on their own terms (and more power to them!). Let's dish the dirt on some of the stranger things about The Rock and Lauren Hashian's relationship.
The Rock's career is still managed by his ex-wife
Perhaps the strangest thing about Dwayne Johnson's romance with Lauren Hashian is his relationship with his ex — but in the best way. According to Newsweek, Johnson met his first wife, Dany Garcia, during their studies at the University of Miami, where the athlete-turned-actor had a football scholarship. The pair got married in 1997 and had daughter Simone, but split a decade later.
The same year their divorce was finalized, Johnson asked Garcia to manage his acting career. He had just endured a series of roles in average-performing movies and was sick of having to lose weight in order to fit into Hollywood's mold of what an actor should look like. "We knew that we were moving into that period of our lives, the closing of a personal relationship," Garcia told Marie Claire in 2017. "I was already deeply involved with his agents, I was already commenting on scripts. It was a very natural conversation, where he just said to me, 'I would love for you to do this full-time.'"
While Garcia helped Johnson build an empire, this dynamic duo maintained the kind of blended family that spends Thanksgiving at the same table. According to Forbes, The Rock earned $124 million in 2018, which is the most any actor has ever earned since the magazine began its Celebrity 100 list two decades ago. We love to see amicable exes killing it in showbiz.
Dwayne Johnson wasn't expecting his relationship with Lauren Hashian
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the kind of person who gets up at 4 a.m. for his daily work out. With an absolutely massive stature at 6'5" and 260 lbs., he spent the better part of his career as an adult slamming down people in the WWE ring. Not to mention, he's the Scorpion King — the Scorpion King! It doesn't get much tougher than that, but Johnson also happens to be a total romantic in real life.
In a 2012 interview with People, the father of three admitted he wasn't sure he'd find love a second time after divorcing Dany Garcia, yet the impossible did happen. "I was so fortunate to have fallen in love once," Johnson told the magazine. "To fall in love again? That's a hard thing to do twice in the position I'm in. I'm one lucky son of a b**ch." Of course, The Rock was talking about Lauren Hashian, though he's got a lot more than love to be thankful for. As Johnson's Rampage co-star Jeffrey Dean Morgan later quipped to Rolling Stone, "Not only is [Johnson] juggling the 9 million things he's got on his plate for work, he's also raising kids and got a happy marriage ... I kind of f**king hate him."
These lovebirds met while The Rock was still married
In 2006, Johnson was busy filming The Game Plan. While the flick garnered abysmal ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, it might just be the most important movie he's ever made. According to People, the actor ended up meeting one Lauren Hashian on the set. At the time, Johnson was still a married man, and though he definitely hit it off with the singer-songwriter, it doesn't seem like any blurry, Brangelina kind of shenanigans went on behind the scenes. In fact, ex-wife Dany Garcia claims they both took time to process their breakup together.
"We spoke every day, and multiple times a day — not only on business, but on what was happening personally," Garcia told Marie Claire about the time following their divorce. "We spent over a year looking at the things that didn't work in our marriage, the reasons why, making sure those elements had been cleared and taken care of, and that we had a real understanding of respect."
In other words: Johnson was probably just friends with Hashian until it was clear his first marriage wasn't going to work. According to Metro, these two didn't officially start dating until after he announced that he'd split from Garcia in 2007.
12 years to the alter aside, their romance was a whirlwind
It's no secret that celebrities in Hollywood like to move fast. Chris Pratt famously popped the question to Katherine Schwarzenegger just seven months after sparking dating rumors. Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin were engaged faster than most of us even knew they were back on again. While Dwayne Johnson wasn't in a rush to tie the knot for a second time, he settled into domestic bliss with Lauren Hashian not long after they got together.
While speaking with Esquire in 2015, the former pro-wrestler admitted he had been living with Hashian for eight or nine years. If you do the math, that means the pair moved in together sometime in either 2006 or 2007 (considering he split from Garcia in 2007, it was probably the latter). This is hardly shocking considering the emphasis Johnson seems to put on his home life, but he actually credits Hashian for allowing the success he has achieved.
"You gotta get the better half in there," he said, making sure Hashian was name-dropped in his Esquire interview. "With all the cool s**t and success that I've been lucky enough to get? That doesn't happen unless the home life is solid."
Dwayne Johnson battled depression early on in their relationship
The Rock seems to have an inspiring, positive mentality on his social media accounts, but the actor has had his fair share of dark times. Luckily, Lauren Hashian was there with him through the worst of it. In a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, the former pro-wrestler admitted that the first time he ever suffered from a bout of depression happened around the time of his divorce, which was also around the time he entered his new romance with Hashian.
"Around 2008, 2009, I was going through a lot of personal s**t that was really f**king me up. I was just struggling, man," he said. "Struggling to figure out what kind of dad am I gonna be. Realizing I'd done a piss-poor job of cultivating relationships, and a lot of my friends had fallen by the wayside. I was just scared. Personally, everything was in a very bad and challenging place." It's undeniably tough to grapple with mental illness while forming the foundation of a brand new relationship, but Hashian didn't seem to waver. The singer-songwriter stuck by her man, and Johnson has since been to therapy "a few times."
We applaud Johnson for speaking openly about his mental health struggles.
Lauren Hashian broke the tragic Paul Walker news
The news of Paul Walker's death rattled Hollywood. According to The Guardian, The Fast and the Furious star and his friend, Roger Rodas, were found dead in November 2013 after the Porsche Walker was riding in crashed "at a speed of more than 100mph and burst into flames." Johnson — who was still filming Furious 7 at the time of the accident — was devastated by the death of his longtime co-star, but Hashian was the one who first heard the news.
"I was driving with Lauren when she immediately turned very quiet and was looking at me, studying, wondering if I knew," Johnson later told The Hollywood Reporter. "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 ... Then once we got home, we started bawling." According to the media outlet, Johnson still had one more day left of filming, which he eventually went back to do a month or two later.
First came the babies in the baby carriage
The Rock and Lauren Hashian are a modern couple. They don't seem to care much about traditional couple milestones and did everything pretty much backwards compared to the 1950s standards of domestic life ... not that there's anything wrong with that. These two started dating before Johnson was even officially divorced, then had kids years before actually getting married.
While Johnson already had a daughter from his previous marriage, he welcomed a new baby girl, Jasmine, to his brood in 2015. Apparently, the actor was very highly involved in the birthing process (as much as he could be considering Hashian was the one who was pregnant), and opened up about the touching experience on Instagram at the time: "I was right there during labor, helping her breathe, every highly intense contraction, every second of pain, right there watching the actual birth, cutting the cord and wiping the tears. Incredible."
After Johnson and Hashian welcomed their second daughter, Tiana Gia, in 2018, he posted a similar skin-to-skin photo as to when Jasmine was born. "I was raised and surrounded by strong, loving women all my life," he wrote. "But after participating in baby Tia's delivery, it's hard to express the new level of love, respect and admiration I have for [Hashian]." As we already know, these proud parents didn't end up tying the knot until the following year.
The Rock and Lauren Hashian weren't already married?
If you found yourself thinking, "Hey, wasn't The Rock already married?" you weren't the only one. This star has confused fans for years over his relationship status with Lauren Hashian. Anyone who's ever casually visited Dwayne Johnson's Instagram would probably think the pair had already tied the knot based on his various family-centered posts, like this shot of him spoon-feeding Hashian while she breastfed baby Tia, or this heartfelt Mother's Day message. Not to mention, he wouldn't stop calling Hashian his wife, even when they weren't married.
However, the former pro-wrestler shut down the long-running marriage rumors that he helped spark in the first place while speaking with Entertainment Tonight in 2018: "I just refer to [Hashian] as my wife all the time. So a lot of people are like, 'Oh, did you get married? I'm like, 'No. Easy. Don't rush big daddy.'"
While most of us wouldn't consider 12 years to be speedy, you certainly can't rush perfection. To be fair, some people maybe do need more than a decade together before taking that step, but this pair had already been living together for about 10 years when Hashian finally walked down the aisle. Besides, what's the difference apart from who would get part of Johnson's estimated $320 million net worth in a potential divorce settlement?
Johnson and Hashian's strange secret to a lasting romance
Dwayne Johnson is the kind of tough guy who could somehow adopt a believable role as a tooth fairy after spending decades dominating in the WWE ring. He even pulled off playing himself in the Jem and the Holograms remake (if you look at the ratings, you know you've got to have a sense of humor for that one). Needless to say, the Johnson-Hashian household is filled with laughter, and the Tooth Fairy star even pledged to make his kids laugh for the rest of his life in a too-sweet Instagram post that celebrated the birth of his third daughter.
Laughter is indeed the best medicine, and it's the secret to The Rock's lasting relationship with Lauren Hashian — but so is a good, old fashioned roast. Let's just say Johnson is not cooking dinner because he's the one being roasted. After being crowned People's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 2016, the athlete-actor claimed his relationship was "the greatest" because of the constant onslaught of teasing lobbed at him by his singer-songwriter love. "First of all, she teases me about everything. Everything," he said. "Nothing is off-limits in our house. And it's the beauty of it. And I tease her with everything." Apparently, nothing shows true love like making fun of your spouse.
Lauren Hashian is private about their relationship
There's no question that The Rock lives a pretty public life. You don't just get to film a Jumanji remake and walk away. Every single signature raised-eyebrow selfie he posts to Instagram gets blasted out to 154 million followers. If you're not sure how much 154 million really is, it's about 17 times the population of New York City or just under half of the entire population of the United States. That's a lot of eyes looking at what Dwayne Johnson is cooking.
Lauren Hashian, however, has a different approach to life. The singer-songwriter is notoriously private, and didn't even walk the red carpet with Johnson until 2013, according to Oprah Magazine. The pair has also been known to check into hotels using pseudonyms (Rolling Stone reports that they used the alias Sam Cooke at least once). In a 2017 interview with Vydia, Hashian explained the reason why she holds on tightly to her private life. "I love keeping a low-key profile and holding onto privacy and normalcy. Especially for [my daughter] Jasmine," she said. "Since my man spends much of his life in front of a camera, I'm a little more reserved with stepping out and being 'out there' as much. It just gives us balance, and makes you appreciate privacy and a 'normal' life even more."
As the old saying goes, opposites really do attract.
These two quietly pushed back their wedding
Fans weren't wrong to guess that Dwayne Johnson was already married. The same year he claimed those pesky marriage rumors were false and that he was in no rush to tie the knot, the actor was actually planning a low-key wedding with Lauren Hashian. Unfortunately, sometimes real life gets in the way.
In his 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Johnson admitted that they originally planned to get married in Hawaii that spring ... before Hashian became pregnant. They already had a toddler to take care of, and who really needs to feel like they're having a shotgun wedding with their second kid? "We were talking about it," he told the magazine. "And then all of a sudden I get a text from her with a [picture of a] pregnancy test ... All I did was look at her ... Guess what. You're pregnant. Baby in you now."
The star claimed that they ended up pushing back the date because, "Mama don't wanna take wedding pictures with a big belly — Mama wanna look good." Totally fair enough.
Then The Rock and Lauren Hashian secretly said 'I do'
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Lauren Hashian may have pushed back their original wedding date, but they did end up following through with their plans to marry in Hawaii, a state that's special to the Moana star because he used to call it home. In an Instagram video, the former pro-wrestler waxed poetic about growing up in Honolulu, where he went to middle school and high school, was evicted from his apartment when his parents couldn't pay the rent, and got arrested a handful of times (he's obviously since cleaned up his act).
This time around, Johnson made new memories by secretly tying the knot with Hashian. There's not much known about the couple's August 2019 wedding ceremony, beyond the sweet Instagram photo Johnson shared. Hashian didn't even publicly acknowledge the nuptials until more than 24 hours after walking down the aisle. We do know the groom wore white to the beachy ceremony (how dare he try to show up the bride), and Johnson's former brother-in-law was in attendance (he snapped the photo that was put on social media).
We couldn't be happier for these newlyweds!