Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is No. 1 at the box office, but not on our list.
Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Adam Copeland and Andre the Giant
Scott Garfield/Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection; Jonathan Hession/History Channel/Courtesy Everett Collection; 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection
In the past decade, a wrestling-ring-to-Hollywood pipeline has emerged as a viable career path. The most obvious examples of leveraging WWE as one grand TV and film audition are Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and John Cena, but there are plenty of other examples — and a whole bunch of predecessors.
Without Hulk Hogan, there would have probably been no The Rock, let alone Dwayne Johnson as a household name. Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) carried the professional wrestling industry on his 24-inch biceps (they were really 22 inches) for the entire 1980s. While Hollywood proved a bust (multiple times) for Hollywood Hogan, it opened the door to the transition.
The Hollywood Reporter has ranked the top 10 wrestlers turned actors — a number of notable names missed the cut. So shoutout here to a group of honorable mentions, including Stacy Kiebler (some sitcoms here and there), Randy Orton, CM Punk, Mike “The Miz” Mizanin, MJF (in Happy Gilmore 2!), “Macho Man” Randy Savage (Spider-man!), Sasha Banks aka Mercedes Moné (she saved Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian), “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Bill Goldberg, “Diamond” Dallas Page, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, Becky Lynch, Chris Jericho and more.
Why so many? Well, for starters, The Expendables call sheet alone reads like an old WWE roster. And wrestlers often make for good camera-ready cameos — when you need a big guy for your situation comedy, call WWE HQ in Stamford, Connecticut. WWE Studios produces more non-wrestling content than you might think, though much of it goes straight to home video (today, WWE Network).
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Dave Bautista
Image Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate It felt like Bautista (Batista in WWE) would be just fine as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy — he had the build, and the makeup department could take care of the rest — but as it turns out, he’s actually a fine and fairly versatile actor. Bautista is as busy in Hollywood these days as Batista was in WWE in 2006, which is to say, he’s heavily booked.
Bautista did something very smart that helps him stand out here. The former “The Animal Batista” was built like — well, like an animal. Bautista is 6’4” (WWE exaggerated to 6’6”) and now a very trim 240 pounds; he was billed as 290 lbs. as a wrestler, and that was probably about right.
Though actors usually need to bulk up for certain roles, Bautista has slimmed down to fit in. That sort of reverse body transformation has really helped the suspension of disbelief aspect that Hollywood, like WWE, demands. When you’re built like “Batista” (and Drax), you’re probably not going to get many everyman roles.
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Dwayne Johnson
Image Credit: Everett Johnson is undoubtedly the most successful actor on this list — and that has to count for something here — but he’s not the best. He’s made a lot of money for a lot of people, sure — including himself — but critical acclaim has thus far eluded Johnson. Maybe A24’s The Smashing Machine will change that. (Black Adam certainly did not.)
The Rock has a few things going for him. He has a killer work ethic, is an all-time great talker, and he knows his market. That’s probably why almost every Dwayne Johnson vehicle and performance looks and feels the same. How popular is Johnson? It wasn’t that long ago there was a pretty serious call for the one-time Rocky Maivia to run for president … of the United States of America.
He’s an impressive man — but not (yet?) a particularly impressive thespian.
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John Cena
Image Credit: Courtesy of Katie Yu/ HBO Max Cena’s acting chops are a bit of a polarizing topic. At the very least, Cena has entered his second act — acting — fearlessly, and is always willing to take the piss out of himself. Though Dwayne Johnson has made a bigger splash in the broader entertainment business (beyond just sports entertainment), he also had a first-mover advantage here. Though it’s close, Cena has had the bigger WWE career — arguably the biggest on this list.
There’s an argument to place Cena ahead of Johnson here, but theater owners (and Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions) would take some serious exception with that — and they’d have a real case to do so. Consider this feud from their WWE days — they’re 1-1 against each other at WrestleManias — to be ongoing. The ultimate winner (and champion) of this long-term rivalry, now spanning multiple industries, remains TBD.
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“Rowdy” Roddy Piper
Image Credit: Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection Piper might not be a Mt. Rushmore wrestler (not that he’s super far-off), but They Live is enough to assign him the final Mt. Rushmore-head spot on this very specific list.
Directed by John Carpenter, the cult classic They Live gave us the cult-classic line: “I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubble gum.” (Society has since made the quote a bit more lyrical.) Piper, who spoke the line, is credited with also thinking it up.
The “Rowdy” one had a really good training ground with his “Piper’s Pit,” one of WWE/WWF’s first wrestler-led interview segments. Piper parlayed that into an acting career that also included a recurring role (as an insane pro wrestler) on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It may not have been a huge stretch, but c’mon, it’s Sunny.
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Adam Copeland
Image Credit: Michael Tompkins/Syfy/Courtesy Everett Collection Copeland, “Edge” in WWE, has actor good looks — and actor chops. He’s no small fry, but Copeland has more of an actor’s build than most others on this list. He’s tall, but he can blend, and that has really helped Copeland disappear into characters.
Copeland’s résumé includes some serious story arcs. On Vikings, his Kjetill Flatnose appeared in 25 episodes, and before that, Copeland did 42 episodes of Haven as Dwight Hendrickson. Last year, Copeland played Ares in a trio of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He’s, like, an actual actor. Now, if only “The Rated R Superstar” could walk away from wrestling — for good this time.
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Kevin Nash
Image Credit: Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection And you thought Hulk Hogan would be our highest-ranking member of the nWO here? Even outside of the ring ropes, Nash has been a pretty in-demand bad guy, but he also took the stage as Tarzan in the Magic Mike movies — so there’s at least some versatility here.
There’s also a problem here. If you thought Dwayne Johnson was too big to disappear into a character, which he is, try being 6’10” like Nash. There’s not a whole lot of leading-men roles for guys who were once billed as being seven-footers. That said, Nash isn’t even the tallest guy on our list — he’s not even the second tallest. Bonus points if you can guess both …
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Hulk Hogan
Image Credit: New Line/Courtesy Everett Collection Here he is: the OG. Terry Bollea got the acting bug by playing (“The Ultimate Male”) Thunderlips in Rocky III, and then he took a few real runs at Hollywood. Unfortunately, the chops and the material were both letdowns.
Hulk Hogan’s big acting breakout was supposed to Suburban Commando, though that movie may have sucked (even) more than his two-years-earlier No Holds Barred. We can all probably agree that Mr. Nanny sucked most of all. Hogan eventually found his spot in the business with the (mostly) straight-to-home-video Thunder in Paradise franchise. That’s not to say the movies and the television series were good, but they were more … Hulk Hogan, brother.
Still, credit where it is due: there probably is no Dwayne Johnson, John Cena and Dave Bautista without Terry Bollea. Though he never properly dropped the atomic leg on Hollywood, he did kick a door open.
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Paul Wight
Image Credit: Gilles Mingasson/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection Wellllllll, it’s the Big Show.
Paul Wight is our first actual seven-footer on this list, though he too will not be its tallest by the end. Not only is Wight problematically taller than Kevin Nash, the dude weighed like 500 pounds at one point. Like Dave Bautista, he has since shed excess weight, but he’ll probably never be under 380 — how many opportunities does Hollywood have for someone that size?
The answer: almost none, with two exceptions. Wight can play someone comically large, like (wrestler) Captain Insano in The Waterboy and Huge Santa in Jingle All the Way. Alternatively, Wight can play himself, which he did in Netflix’s one-and-done family sitcom The Big Show Show. Though his options are limited, Wight has made the most of the opportunities that do exist.
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Jesse Ventura
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection Jesse “The Body” Ventura doesn’t have much in terms of a body of work — a term as the governor of Minnesota tends to slow down an acting career. But hey, Predator was a real movie!
The rest of Ventura’s role call reads as you would expect: Demolition Man, Running Man, guest spots on series like Renegade and Zorro, a number of cameos and some voiceover work. It’s not a bad career, it’s just not a top five career — especially when you take into account the fact that Ventura probably had the *worst* (it was still quite good) wrestling career of the whole lot. Here, that’s gotta count for something.
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Andre the Giant
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy Everett Collection André wasn’t a good actor and he wasn’t a good (English) speaker, but like André the Giant himself, André René Roussimoff’s role in The Princess Bride is very memorable.
Stories about Roussimoff are as giant as, well, Roussimoff, who stood a real 7’4” and weighed in north of 520 pounds. Had he lived long enough, André the Giant would have made Paul “The Big Show” Wight look like, well, maybe Kevin Nash. In other words, he was huge.
Roussimoff’s Hollywood career was, of course, also limited by his life span — Roussimoff died in 1993 at 46, which was pretty much when Hulk Hogan’s film career was flopping in real time. So yes, André making the cut here is fully a nostalgia play, but nostalgia is a powerful emotion.