Los Angeles — The Rock is a macho icon. So when he puts on a tight satin cowboy outfit and sings “You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man),” word gets around.That performance — the Rock plays a gay bodyguard in the action comedy “Be Cool” — caught the attention of Damon Romine of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation media watchdog group

The GLAAD verdict? Rock-solid.
“He is one of the shining stars in an otherwise poorly received film,” Romine said of the wrestling czar turned Scorpion King.

But it was what the Rock did after filming that showed his true strength. From talk shows to news conferences, the Rock discussed his “Be Cool” role with affection and sincerity, recalling a gay wrestling mentor named Pat Patterson.

“The Rock’s public appearances promoting the movie had a phenomenal impact on what it means to accept and respect gays and lesbians,” Romine said. “The impact of his telling his story will far outlast ‘Be Cool.’ ”

The movie, featuring John Travolta in a reprisal of his showbiz thug from 1995′s “Get Shorty,” cleared a tepid $38.4 million in its first two weeks. But the Rock’s performance grabbed attention. He steals a few scenes with persona- shattering gusto. His character, Elliot, wants to be in pictures but has to earn his bread and butter as a henchman for a white gangsta-wannabe. To attract attention to his thespian skills, Elliot does a monologue — from the cheerleading movie “Bring It On.”

“It was an opportunity to play a conflicted guy in a world that he didn’t want to be in,” says the Rock, 32, whose real name is Dwayne Johnson, “but at the same time who felt he had something to offer the world through song and dance, a gay man who was proud by the end of the movie and embraced even more being gay… I wanted to try and play it as straight as I possibly could, no pun intended.”

The Rock called Patterson, a ’70s wrestler turned announcer and an out, strong and truthful gay man “who, by the way, I’ve literally seen kick a lot of people’s asses.”

In the early 1990s, after a stint in the Canadian Football League fizzled, the Rock showed off his ring moves for Patterson, a friend of his grandfather’s. Patterson then alerted Vince McMahon, chief of the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment), to the Rock’s potential.

“Be Cool” pokes fun at the Rock. The raised right eyebrow he patented in the ring is used as Elliot’s one-note talent. But he rebuffs a suggestion that Elliot is muscle-bound in his head — the Rock sees the character as a genuine depiction of many aspiring actors. But the Rock did not have to shove resumes and headshots into the hands of anybody who knew somebody.

“I was really, really lucky,” he says. “I was on that (wrestling) stage for four hours on national television every week. It wasn’t like all of a sudden I was doing ‘The Mummy Returns’ and happened to get noticed.”

It is hard not to notice the Rock. Dressed in a blue dress shirt and navy blazer for an interview at a Century City hotel, he exudes a gentle giant’s coiled tranquility. His Samoan and Afro-Canadian heritage has sculpted an exotic action-hero look, but he is not stopping there.

Unlike another buff outsider named Schwarzenegger, who dreamed of a future in blockbusters long before he moved to Los Angeles, the Rock had no such aspirations early on. Married with a daughter, he is a third-generation wrestler, and he ruled the stage during one of the sport’s surges in popularity. He was born in Hayward, raised in Honolulu and played high school football in Bethlehem, Pa. He then played at the University of Miami and signed with the Calgary Stampeders for a season before the family business called.

After years of over-the-top image-making in pro wrestling, the Rock is smoothing the rough edges. He takes acting lessons. He has scrapped the habit of talking about himself in the third person. Two guest stints on “Saturday Night Live” and a one-time gig on “That ’70s Show” showed presence beyond arena strutting. And he is already a box-office force, commanding an eight- figure salary per leading role. “The Scorpion King” (2002), an effects-laden spin-off of “The Mummy Returns,” cleared $164.5 million at the international box office. “The Rundown” (2003), in which he plays a bounty hunter, and the remake of “Walking Tall” (2003), featuring him as a sheriff, each made about $47 million domestically.

Perhaps the greatest validation of the Rock’s arrival was being set up as a celebrity mark on MTV’s prank show “Punk’d.” Producers blew up his trailer on the set of “Be Cool,” and in the chaotic aftermath the Rock shoved who he thought was a police officer.

He is done wrestling for now. His contract quietly expired at the end of last year, and his management team congratulated him on a career well done. All that was missing was a gold watch. “It hit me like a ton of bricks,” says the Rock, who added that the door is open for his return. He owns half of the Rock name.

The man who coined the phrase “Can you smell what the Rock is cookin’?” has plenty of film projects on the front burner, including the video-game- inspired “Doom” and the drama “Gridiron Gang,” in which he plays a counselor of young criminals.

Now he wants to diversify — and applaud diversity. “You hear that all the time, about actors waiting for that role to be fearless and jump off the cliff,” he says. “For me, that was this role.”