John Cena, Dwayne Johnson and Dave Bautista are the most successful wrestlers to have made the jump to Hollywood acting — many others have tried but failed to ignite superstardom (Triple H, Steve Austin, Bill Goldberg).
It feels like just yesterday that Cena had criticized Johnson's decision to go to acting as a "betrayal." However, now that Cena has made a career acting in such films as "Blockers," "Trainwreck," "The Wall" and this weekend's newly-released blockbuster "Bumblebee," he now admits that he was wrong to criticize Johnson, “I’m sorry and I was wrong,” he said during an appearance on the Gorilla Position Podcast (via Screen Rant). “That’s the best thing I can do.”
“This is a very tough balancing act and when I called out Dwayne, I called him out because of ignorance. I called him out as someone that had tunnel vision in WWE and didn’t understand the process that when you make a movie, you are not allowed to do anything else because if you ruin this — if Seth Rollins splits my nose open over here — I can’t film the movie and there’s hundreds of other people whose financial well being depend on whether I show up to work in one piece,” Cena continued.
“If I stop production, that could shut production down,” Cena said. “That costs the movie money. It hampers the success of the movie, so once again I was foolish, selfish, and ignorant, but it made for awesome TV, so at least we’ve had that. It’s a conversation I’ve had with Dwayne multiple times and something I’m super comfortable telling any interviewer. I was ignorant. I was wrong and I’m sorry.”
As mentioned, it's nothing new seeing WWE wrestlers (formerly the WWF) making the jump to acting. The '80s had their fair share of successful jumps from wrestling to acting. Andre the Giant ("The Princess Bride") Hulk Hogan ("Mr. Mom") and, my personal coup de coeur, Roddy Rowdy Piper in "They Live," who gave the best performance int the greatest movie featuring a wrestler.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's career has made him the most bankable star in Hollywood, an impressive feat for the 46-year-old. However, success doesn't make quality and I have consistently maintained that if Johnson would push himself artistically he would no doubt surprise people with his natural acting abilities. The guy is talented but he's in too much junk. Sure there's going to be a mindlessly entertaining film here and there, like "Pain and Gain," and "Fast Five," but he's sold his soul to the Chinese market, all he does is films that are mass-marketed for not just American audiences but the safe-guarded communist Chinese industry.