Professional wrestling, including top promotions like WWE, TNA, and AEW, is inherently theatrical, with wrestlers portraying characters and storylines, making the transition from the ring to the screen quite natural. These athletes are adept at following scripts, performing for live and televised audiences, and executing complex, often perilous stunts. Shows like “WWE Raw” blur the lines between a scripted drama series and a sporting event.

In the past, wrestlers typically found themselves cast in strange horror and sci-fi films, with many unable to break free from the pitfalls of B-movie roles. Conversely, some wrestlers have succeeded in Hollywood, becoming major stars. While most wrestler-turned-actors have had varied levels of success in their entertainment careers, a few have distinctly excelled or faltered. 

Here, we explore six wrestlers who surpassed expectations in Hollywood, alongside six who struggled to make their mark. It’s important to note we’re focusing on genuine acting roles and not instances where wrestlers simply portray themselves or similar characters in cameos. 

John Cena once openly criticized Dwayne Johnson for his dedication to acting, a remark he’s come to regret deeply. This regret likely stems not just from remorse over slighting a colleague, but also from Cena’s own considerable achievements in acting. 

Cena’s portrayal of the superhero Peacemaker in the 2021 film “The Suicide Squad” and its spin-off TV series secured his status as a successful crossover actor. This role, bridging the old DC Extended Universe with the new DC Universe, highlights his versatility, alongside nearly two decades of film and TV performances. 

Initially cast in straightforward action roles, Cena soon expanded into comedies, dramas, and voice work. Hits like “Daddy’s Home” and “Vacation Friends” even led to sequels. He smartly joined established franchises such as “Fast and Furious” and “Transformers,” effectively blending action roles with his comedic talent and approachable persona. Cena has landed many roles emphasizing his humor and charm, with minimal focus on action or stunts. 

One of the reasons wrestlers often get into acting is so they don’t have to take chairs to the head for their entire lives. They are treated as independent contractors by the WWE, and therefore aren’t eligible for things like pensions or paid healthcare. In other words, wrestling isn’t an ideal lifelong career, so it’s wise to try falling back on other things — like acting. But in the case of Paul Levesque, aka Triple H, he’s basically in charge of the entire WWE at this point so he doesn’t have such concerns in terms of long-term financial stability.

Which is a good thing, as Triple H’s attempt to have an acting career didn’t come anywhere close to panning out. His acting debut was in 2004’s “Blade: Trinity,” jumping into the “Blade” film series at not only its lowest point but also its end. He stepped away from acting for a bit, only to give it a serious go in 2011 by headlining two films. “The Chaperone” was Triple H’s token family comedy, and “Inside Out” was his big action movie, but both were flops. Beyond the bizarre “Surf’s Up 2: WaveMania” — which was a WWE Studios co-production that featured a number of WWE wrestlers in voice roles — the rest of Triple H’s filmography has consisted of cameos as himself, usually a surefire sign that a wrestler’s actual acting career is over. 

Given that there seem to be specific things that happen in every Dwayne Johnson movie, range might not necessarily be one of his strengths as an actor. But it’s not entirely fair to pick on him for that when there are any number of actors who basically just play a version of themselves in almost every movie. That’s to say nothing of actors who have literally played the exact same character for decades.

All digs aside, Johnson has no doubt proven that he’s just as capable of maintaining a successful acting career as a successful wrestling career. Johnson’s films have grossed over $6 billion at the global box office, putting him among the highest earners in movie history. Sure, some of that is owed to him latching onto existing successful franchises like “The Fast and the Furious,” but Johnson has done just fine with properties he was with from the start — “Moana” in particular. There’s also the in-between cases, like him being a part of the massively successful relaunch of the “Jumanji” series. 

It’s been a while since any of Johnson’s non-franchise films have landed, and 2024’s “Red One” in particular was a huge money loser. But he would have to have basically nothing but massive bombs for the rest of his career to come close to threatening his title as the most successful wrestler-turned-actor of all time. 

It’s not only the men of professional wrestling that have tried their hand at acting. But the list of female wrestlers who have pursued the craft is not only much shorter, but contains not a single example of one who has yet to make a significant dent on either the big or small screen. That isn’t to say that they’ve all been failures. With a few, their acting journeys are only just getting started, so it’s too soon to make that call. 

But when it comes to Rena “Sable” Lesnar (née Mero), who rose to fame during the “Attitude Era” of the WWE in the 1990s, followed by a brief return in the mid-2000s, it’s fair to say her acting dreams are well and truly over. After initially just being Triple H’s valet — a term for an attractive woman who serves as a ringside companion-manager for a male wrestler — Sable quickly established herself as a wrestler and superstar all her own. Her first acting credit was on the syndicated crime series “Pacific Blue,” a show which frequently utilized wrestlers as guest stars. She then did one-off episodes of “First Wave” and “Relic Hunter,” short-lived series that were quickly forgotten. 

Sable would appear in one theatrically-released film, the 2001 comedy flop “Corky Romano,” playing a character credited only as “female bouncer.” Three TV movies followed over 2002 and 2003, marking the end of her non-WWE screen credits and her very short flirtation with acting. 

Among the many interesting facts about “They Live” is that writer-director John Carpenter never considered anyone other than wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper to play the lead. Piper’s acting experience at that point was extremely limited, but the famed filmmaker sensed that Piper had what it took to lead a future cult classic sci-fi horror film. And he was absolutely right.

Just starring in a movie as beloved as 1988’s “They Live” would have almost been enough to prove Piper was a successful actor, even if he didn’t do anything else of consequence. And that’s nearly the case, with the bulk of Piper’s filmography either containing known flops or movies so obscure they don’t even have their own Wikipedia pages. But while quantity over quality isn’t usually the mark of success in terms of an actor’s career, there is something to be said for the fact that Piper had over 70 acting credits where he didn’t play himself, stretching well into the 2010s. That’s one of the longest and most prolific acting careers of any wrestler to date. 

Piper also seemed to always do just the right project at just the right time to keep himself relevant, like when he appeared in two episodes of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” between 2009 and 2013 as Da’ Maniac. He clearly had no intention of slowing down, having so many completed movies in the can that he had not one but two films released posthumously after his death in 2015.

Michael Mizanin is one of the fairly rare examples of someone who gained fame before becoming a wrestler. In this case, he was a competitor in multiple installments of MTV’s “The Challenge” franchise, beginning with his debut on Season 10 of “Road Rules.” He then parlayed his experience in competitive reality shows into appearing on “WWE Tough Enough,” a show where contestants compete for a chance to sign with the WWE. The rest is history — Mizanin has been wrestling as The Miz since 2004.

Eight years later, The Miz took the next step in his performing arts career when he landed his first acting roles. 2012 saw him appear in an episode of the TV show “Psych,” as well as cameoing as himself in the political comedy “The Campaign.” In 2013, he became the third wrestler to star in an installment of “The Marine” movie franchise, following John Cena and Ted DiBiase Jr. The Miz would stay with the franchise from “The Marine 3” through “The Marine 6,” which sounds impressive and all, but fronting a series of unremarkable direct-to-video action movies — that are produced by WWE Studios, no less — doesn’t an A-lister make. 

Two WWE Studios Christmas movies would mark the only other non-cameo, not-as-himself film credits for The Miz. Between that and “The Marine” franchise having been dormant since 2018, it would seem that The Miz is back to just being a wrestler and reality TV star. 

After directing him in “Glass Onion,” Rian Johnson proclaimed Dave Bautista the best wrestler-turned-actor. And given that he was part of the cast of “Avengers: Endgame,” Bautista is also the current title holder for the wrestler with in the highest-grossing movie — which is going to be a really tough record for him to ever be stripped of. 

As of 2019, Bautista has been retired from the WWE and professional wrestling as a whole, focusing entirely on his acting career. And while neither Dwayne Johnson nor John Cena have been able to stay out of the ring despite their massive Hollywood success, Bautista might be the one who actually commits to remaining a full-time actor.

Though playing Drax in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was Bautista’s big breakthrough role, he had been acting on film and in television for almost a decade prior. He even racked up some impressive credits in that time, including TV shows “Smallville” and “Chuck” and underrated films like “The Man with the Iron Fists” and “Riddick.” But Bautista’s career blasted into the stratosphere after his MCU debut, and he has since appeared in franchises like the James Bond films and “Dune.” He’s also shown his range with comedies like “My Spy” and “The Naked Gun,” while sharing an award with the rest of the ensemble for their work in the drama “The Last Showgirl.” 

Typically, if a wrestler is going to try to break into acting at all, it’s going to be fairly early in their career. But Shawn Michaels wasn’t willing to concede his chance at a movie career even though he hadn’t yet made a film by 2016. The following year, at 52 years old, Michaels made his screen debut in a Christian-themed dramedy called “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone.” Like many religious films, it seemed to find a decent amount of audience love, but critics were unimpressed – and it didn’t make a splash with the overall moviegoing public. 

Previously, he had appeared in the aforementioned wrestler-friendly “Pacific Blue” and an episode of “Baywatch,” but “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” marked his first true stab at the acting phase of his career. That same year, he played a small role in the direct-to-video final installment of the “Pure Country” trilogy (yep, there was a whole “Pure Country” trilogy). Michaels did have a major role in “The Marine 6” alongside The Miz, but that did as much for Michaels’s path to movie stardom as it did for The Miz’s. 

A 2019 baseball drama called “90 Feet from Home” is thus far the final film credit in the very short movie career of Shawn Michaels. Since 2022, Michaels has been the WWE’s Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative, claiming that same year that he would never wrestle again. Will he act again? We shall see. 

Whereas Roddy Piper’s acting career was successful mostly because of quantity — if not so much quality — Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s was very much the opposite. He’s only had about a dozen actual roles, and they’ve stopped since 2014, but he racked up some very famous titles in his limited filmography. Ventura also gets serious props for his first two movie roles being in the impressive one-two punch of “Predator” and “The Running Man.” 

While his 1991 sci-fi film “Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe” didn’t end up being the star vehicle it was intended to be, its failure remarkably didn’t derail his screen career. Ventura followed that up with roles in “Ricochet,” “Demolition Man,” “Major League II,” and “Batman and Robin” — not all winners, but still a far more impressive run of films that any other wrestler had in the 1990s. Ventura also ventured into politics during that decade, first becoming mayor of a small town in Minnesota in 1991 before becoming governor of that state from 1999 to 2003. That certainly slowed down his acting career, as he mostly played himself during that same stretch of time.

He returned to acting for a few small roles between 2008 and 2014, but never fully rekindled his career. Nevertheless, the output he did manage at his peak is still enough to declare his overall career a successful one. 

Another wrestler who eventually became a politician is Kane, real name Glenn Thomas Jacobs. It’s ironic that Kane entered politics, given that his wrestling persona was initially one of a character who never spoke at all. Like Jesse Ventura, Kane also added acting to his wrestler-politician hyphenate, but unlike Ventura, Kane’s acting career was as short-lived as it was unremarkable.

In addition to an episode of “Smallville,” Kane has a mere five movie credits to his name. One is as himself in a “Scooby-Doo” animated film, two are both installments of the completely forgotten slasher duology “See No Evil,” one is a small role in “MacGruber,” and the last is the WWE Studios direct-to-video actioner “Countdown.” Of those, MacGruber is the only one that is actually a good movie, but it has nothing to do with Kane’s participation in it. That entire filmography was contained within the 10-year span of 2006-2016, marking the whole of Kane’s attempt at cracking the big screen.   

While the focus here is on wrestlers who were either resounding successes or utter failures as actors, leaving out the ones who fall somewhere in between, there is an exception — the late Hulk Hogan, whose acting career was inconsistent to say the least, and leaned more towards flops than hits. But there is still a case to be made that his acting career was a success overall, in large part because he helped to pave the way for all successful wrestlers-turned-actors going forward. 

For starters, Hogan started off strong with his scene-stealing cameo in “Rocky III,” which was among the first big Hollywood movies in which a wrestler had a prominent acting role. He then set the stage for winking cameos of wrestlers playing themselves in movies with his funny turn in “Gremlins 2: The New Batch.” And say what you will about his syndicated action series “Thunder in Paradise,” but the fact that he got his own TV series in the first place — one that lasted an entire season, to boot — is yet another way Hogan blazed trails for wrestler-actors. 

Sure, there were several other unforgettable Hulk Hogan acting roles that were laughably bad, and not a single movie he headlined actually turned a profit at the box office. But trailblazers still deserve their due, even if some of their trailblazing involved telling those who followed what not to do. 

Back before Extreme Championship Wrestling — better known as ECW — was absorbed by the WWE, it actually got successful enough to make the WWE nervous. And much of that had to do with the popularity of its biggest personality, Rob Van Dam. In fact, even before becoming a member of the WWE, Van Dam had already become a big enough star to attempt an acting career, with his debut — in the 1995 martial arts movie “Superfights” — predating the start of his WWE career by six years.

Van Dam amassed around 30 acting credits between 1995 and 2024, with “The Realtor” being his most recent credit to date. He definitely deserves praise for keeping at it, and he must be easy to work with, given how often he gets cast in things. But there isn’t one single remarkable project in the bunch, with the majority comprising direct-to-video garbage that even he would be hard-pressed to remember exists. He’s one of the only people that got to be in both ECW and WWE wrestling video games though, for whatever that’s worth.