Dwayne The Rock Johnson had a good WWE career, but in 2000, he decided to become a Hollywood star. In the beginning, he played a role in The Mummy Returns, and it was clear that he lacked experience, but he had a charm. His idols Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood, inspired him to succeed.
“I couldn’t say, ‘Oh, let me just follow the half-black and half-Samoan actor who was also a wrestler. Let me follow his path.’ That wasn’t an option, that wasn’t there. So I was forced to create my own,” Johnson said recently.
He continued: “I have an ideology that I always like to share with the inner group, and with some people on the outside, and I’ll share it with you: I don’t just want to play the game. I want to change the way the game is played.”
He did change the game and is now one of the Hollywood superstars known across the world. Johnson owns a production company, works hard all year, has 84.4 million Instagram followers and 11.2 Twitter followers. In 2016, he earned $64.5 million which put him at the Number One spot on Forbes’ highest-paid actor’s list.
Richard Rushfield, who runs the newsletter The Ankler said: “Alone among his generation, Dwayne Johnson has aimed for middle of the road, broad, appealing, leading man status. While his peers have carved out more edgy, cool, of-the-moment profiles, Johnson has assiduously whittled down the rough edges of his early ‘The Rock’ wrestling persona.”
The former WWE star knows how to entertain people, and the movie Fate of the Furious in which Johnson plays the role of Hobbs will cross $1 billion globally by the end of this week. He also played in the disaster movie San Andreas, in comedy Central Intelligence with Kevin Hart and he will appear on Baywatch that is premiered on May 25.
Johnson, who was evicted at 14 said: “I love being able to create big movies or TV shows that entertain people, that make them happy. I know what it’s like to earn a dollar. I know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck and wonder how you’re going to pay the rent. I know what it’s like to be evicted. Money doesn’t fall out of the sky. So, if you’re going to pay for your ticket, that inspires me to want to make a great movie. I always say to everyone, ‘Hey, around the corner we’re getting evicted. Get to work!’ I drive everyone crazy with that.”
Johnson wants to make sure to entertain everyone, and that is why he thinks big, and he thinks globally. He is the kind of entertainer like Tom Cruise or Will Smith, while with his ex-wife Dany Garcia, Johnson is a businessman who runs the production company called Seven Bucks. We have already mentioned the Baywatch movie, but we also need to say that Dwayne Johnson was a teenager when the original show aired. It was the most successful TV series of all time, and The Rock simply had to do the remake. Unlike the TV show, the movie will be funnier and more action-packed and next to Johnson, there are Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra and Alexandra Daddario.
Johnson also had to say something about his philosophy: “I always say, I have one boss. Not the movie studios … The audience. The people. They’ll dictate if there’s another one. I think we have a good shot. You know that cool feeling that you feel when you walk out of the theater thinking, ‘That was the greatest movie!’ And you’re kind of floating and talking about it in the car? I like that kind of thing.”
We all know that a 44-year-old actor is a man of action. He does everything for himself and for the fans. If this means waking up at 4 a.m. every day, working, shooting, being a dad to his 1-year-old daughter Jasmine, he will do it. When asked About breaks, Johnson laughed: “What is this ‘break’ thing you speak of. But it’s a good time for me. There’s a lot of good things going around.”
