Twelve thousand years later, everyone we ever loved has turned to dust, but we are finally finished with the freaking warm-up. Johnson guides me to an enormous contraption constructed of iron and nylon and foam. He grabs two triangular straps and demonstrates how I will (theoretically) use them to move weights.

“Oh no!” I gasp as soon as I start to pull the straps toward myself.

“You got it!” he says. “I got you!”

“Don't help me!” I wail, my arms trembling.

“I'm not,” he lies. “Great!” he also lies. “Need water?”

While I assist Johnson in getting rid of the water he is apparently sooooo desperate to dispose of, he increases the resistance to 85 pounds and takes my place at the machine. He pulls the straps to himself like he is performing a nylon ballet. The attached weights simply fly off the floor. His triceps are like captive wild horses that have finally been set free. Beyond that, the only indications that he is expending any effort come from his eyelids, which flutter slightly every time he wrenches the straps.

Stepping away from the cable machine, Johnson produces a booklet of handwritten notes. “Let me check on this,” he murmurs, head tipped toward his chest. “This is my workout handbook.” Johnson's penmanship is lovely—slender and elegant, with the faint forward slant prescribed by old-fashioned handwriting textbooks. His booklet is filled with permutations of exercise routines, which can work in concert to stabilize his shape or produce subtle or drastic changes as needed. It's a book rooted in practical optimism. It suggests that all body types are achievable to him—that hard work and enthusiasm will eventually generate the desired results.

Unfortunately, what the spidery letters tell Dwayne Johnson is that now we must lift weights with our necks.

“I don't think my neck needs to be stronger,” I say.

“It doesn't!” He smiles. We do it anyway.

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Johnson's in Los Angeles now to film HBO's Ballers, but he's got gyms wherever he goes. He's building one at his farm in Virginia, where he keeps his horses (and also, he says, a piano once owned by Benjamin Franklin; it came with the farm), and he has a workout facility at his primary residence in Florida, where he lives on a compound on the edge of the Everglades, in a tiny rural town popular among professional athletes who yearn for country living within an hour's drive of Miami. As he crisscrosses the country for work, he's constantly scouting new spots. If he has to go to New York for a night, he will find a gym there, and it will be in a dank, subterranean room, probably off an alley that only Johnson can find. If you have a basement, he might be in your house right now, doing leg presses and staying hydrated. Found an incredible little out-of-the-way spot, he might write on Instagram, under a photo of himself lifting your washing machine. #HardestWorkersInTheRoom #ByAnyMeansNecessary #LateNight #StopNever.

For all the attention he's earned as a hulking action star, Johnson's best performances are in those funny roles where he can display flashes of vulnerability. Despite his toned physique, he has a Will Ferrell-esque ability to project childlike innocence and confusion with his large man body and bald baby face.

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There's a scene in this spring's virilely campy Baywatch, for instance, in which Johnson's character is forced to wear normal work clothes instead of a tank top, even though he's the best lifeguard the race of man has ever seen. He doesn't have a line—all he's doing is standing while wearing a polo shirt—but it's inexplicably heartbreaking. Like watching a puppy get fired. And because it's absurd that it's heartbreaking—absurd that the millionaire movie star with the rippling muscles has tricked you into feeling bad for his character due to a minor dress-code issue—it's also weirdly funny.

In an age when it's cooler to hate things than enjoy them, Johnson has carved out an improbable niche for himself, as someone it's safe to like. Maybe you like him because he's big and does fast things in slow motion. Maybe you like him because he had one song to sing in the children's musical he was cast in, and he sang it with his whole heart. Undeniably, he is likable—and likable is lucrative in his line of work: His films have collectively taken in more than a billion dollars a year worldwide, a fact that has made Johnson, at 45 years old, the highest-paid movie star on earth. This popularity has made people wonder just how far it could take him and what, exactly, he'd like to do with it. In a moment of political ridiculousness, there's even the suddenly not ridiculous question of whether Dwayne Johnson might actually be headed for Washington.

Johnson doesn't hesitate when I ask him whether he honestly might one day give up his life as the highest-paid movie star on earth to run for president. "I think that it's a real possibility."

Last June, when The Washington Post published an op-ed suggesting he could be a viable candidate, Johnson posted a screen grab and gave the idea a boost. On Instagram, he called the Post piece “interesting” and “fun to read,” adding that “the most important thing right now is strong honest leadership from our current and future leaders of this country.”

Since then, Johnson tells me, he's given the question more thought. “A year ago,” he says, “it started coming up more and more. There was a real sense of earnestness, which made me go home and think, ‘Let me really rethink my answer and make sure I am giving an answer that is truthful and also respectful.’ I didn't want to be flippant—‘We'll have three days off for a weekend! No taxes!’”

So, after all that consideration, Johnson doesn't hesitate when I ask him whether he honestly might one day give up his life as the highest-paid movie star on earth—which is unquestionably easier, more fun, and more lucrative than being president of the United States—in order to run for office. “I think that it's a real possibility,” he says solemnly.

When you think about the distance Johnson has already traveled, the idea doesn't sound crazy. So far, Johnson's tale of success has been your classic rags-to-stretch-fabrics-to-riches story. He was born in California, the only child of Rocky Johnson, a pioneering black Nova Scotian wrestler who performed in a tag-team duo called the Soul Patrol, and Ata Maivia, who has ties, through her father, to the Anoa'i family—a legendary clan of Samoan wrestlers. Despite the legacy, Johnson grew up poor; he speaks of his family's eviction from a one-room apartment as the formative experience of his adolescence. He racked up numerous arrests for fighting and petty theft while still a minor. In high school, he found football, which helped him find college.