Dwayne Johnson

02 Mar, 1972 |

Actor/Producer

Biography

Dwayne Douglas Johnson, also known by his ring name The Rock, is an American actor and semi-retired professional wrestler who works for WWE. Johnson was a college football player. In 1991, he was on the University of Miami's national championship team. He later played for the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League, and was cut two months into the 1995 season. This led him to become a professional wrestler like his grandfather, Peter Maivia, and his father, Rocky Johnson.  He gained mainstream fame as a wrestler in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) from 1996 to 2004, and was the first third-generation wrestler in the company's history. He was quickly pushed as a face in the WWF, originally billed as "Rocky Maivia", then as "The Rock". He turned heel as a member of the Nation of Domination in 1997. Two years after he joined the WWF, he won the WWF Championship. Johnson is widely considered one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. He has had 17 championship reigns in WWE, including 10 as a world heavyweight champion (the WWF/E Championship eight times and the WCW/World Championship twice), the WWF Intercontinental Championship twice and the WWF Tag Team Championship five times. He is the sixth WWF/E Triple Crown Champion, and the winner of the 2000 Royal Rumble. Johnson's autobiography The Rock Says... (co-written with Joe Layden) was published in 2000. It debuted at #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list and remained on the list for several weeks. Johnson's first leading film role was in The Scorpion King in 2002. For this role, he was paid US$5.5 million, a world record for an actor in his first starring role.  Forbes reports that the actor earned $88 million in 2024. While his holiday film, Red One, struggled at the box office, it later soared in streaming, becoming Amazon MGM Studios’ top film on Prime Video during its opening weekend. His relentless promotion played a crucial role in its success. This marks the fifth time the actor has been included in the list. He first topped it in 2016 with $64.5 million and dominated for three consecutive years in 2019, 2020, and 2021.