Being a great professional wrestler often requires being a great actor to some degree. In addition to the physically demanding fights in the ring, a wrestler needs to be able to engage a crowd and make fans believe in their character’s story. All of the greats have solid acting chops, but not all of them have been able to translate those chops to awesome performances on-screen. Some, however, have proven to be fantastic in both industries.
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Roddy Piper, John Cena, Dave Bautista, and Andre the Giant are just a few wrestling superstars who have turned in top-notch acting performances over the years. And many of them have done so across different genres. Bautista has been able to shine as brightly in buddy comedies as he does in sci-fi epics. Dwayne Johnson has wowed audiences as a rugged federal agent and an animated demigod.ย
There have been some truly great acting performances from professional wrestlers over the years, but which one is the best? Let’s find out.
10. The Big Show – The Waterboy
Paul “The Big Show” Wight’s performance in The Waterboy is a classic example of a wrestler being a wrestler in a movie and doing a damn good job at it.
Wight isn’t in many scenes, but his turn as Captain Insano, the favorite wrestler of Adam Sandler’s Bobby Boucher, is both entertaining and hilarious. Seeing such a massive man brought to tears by Boucher’s dreams not only provides a great bit, but it also helps set the stage for the main character’s story through the rest of the movie.ย
9. Hulk Hogan – Rocky III
Speaking of wrestlers playing wrestlers in movies, there may be no more memorable example than Hulk Hogan in Rocky III. Very few people could be that over-the-top as an antagonist and that terrifying as an opponent, but that’s what Hogan spent decades doing in the ring.
Hogan’s turn as Thunderlips doesn’t demonstrate any groundbreaking acting abilities. It does, however, show that Hogan knew exactly what the assignment called for and delivered flawlessly.
8. Jesse Ventura – Predator
The crew sent in to hunt the titular beast in Predator was made up almost entirely of dangerous, rough-and-tumble men. To stand out as the cockiest and most unpredictable of that group took a special kind of performance. Jesse Ventura was up for the challenge.
Just think back to that early scene on the helicopter, when Ventura’s Blain sizes up his peers and tries to establish his own dominance. It’s expertly delivered sleaze from Ventura, instantly giving the audience someone to root against and completely changing the dynamic of the team.
7. Randy Savage – Spider-Man
I’m not sure if anyone on this list made such a massive impact with such a small amount of screen time. Macho Man Randy Savage only appears in a single scene in Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man, but boy does he make it count.
In an effort to buy a car and impress MJ, Peter tries to use his newly acquired powers to win some money in an underground cage fighting tournament. All he has to do is survive for three minutes against Bonesaw.
Each and every line reading from Macho Man in the scene is better than the last. People are still repeating “Bonesaw is ready” and “It’s playtime” in Savage’s iconic voice more than 20 years later. It’s just such a special performance that shows how great an entertainer Macho Man always was.
6. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – Pain & Gain
Dwayne Johnson is undoubtedly the most popular wrestler-turned-actor on the list. He’s arguably one of the most popular actors on the entire planet. That said, not every Dwayne Johnson performance is good. He’s got plenty of bland performances on his resume, many of which have come in films he’s produced, where he doesn’t do much more than play himself.
When Johnson is good, though, he’s really good. The Rock has a handful of great performances littered throughout his career and his turn as bodybuilding criminal Paul Doyle in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain is his best by a mile. He’s hilarious and completely self-aware, one of the rare times he actually uses his body to enhance his comedy.
The scene where Paul attempts to rob a bank, only to have a bag of paint blow up in his face, shows just how good Johnson can be when he sets his own ego aside. It’s frustrating we don’t see that type of performance from him more often.
5. Andre the Giant – The Princess Bride
Andre the Giant plays so well off of Wallace Shawn and Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride. It’s one of those situations where it’s hard to separate one actor’s performance from the others because they operate so well as a group.ย
Andre the Giant’s performance may not have been as good without Shawn or Patinkin, but the same can be said for how his performance affected the two of them. That’s the sign of a great screen presence and it’s a shame we didn’t get to see much more of him outside the ring.
4. Kevin Nash – Magic Mike XXL
The man they call Diesel is a much better actor than you might expect. He manages to be one of the standout pieces of just about anything he’s in, whether it’s a zany 2000s comedy like The Longest Yard or an introspective character journey like Dog. He’s consistently great and tends to fly under the radar when it comes to wrestlers-turned-actors.
The best role of Nash’s career, however, is most definitely the middle-aged stripper known as Tarzan in the Magic Mike series. Magic Mike XXL isn’t only the greatest film in the trilogy, but it also features career-best work from most of the cast, Nash included.
3. Roddy Piper – They Live
It’s impossible to talk about great acting performances from wrestlers and not bring up Roddy Piper in John Carpenter’s horror satire They Live.ย
Piper may not have been in as many movies as some of the modern wrestlers-turned-actors, but he certainly made a lasting impression when he was given the chance. Playing the lead role for one of the best genre filmmakers in history, Piper simply exudes cool in every minute of They Live. His fight scenes are unsurprisingly incredible and every one of his lines makes you lean a little closer to the TV. He’s a badass in every sense of the word.
2. Dave Bautista – Knock at the Cabin
Choosing one Dave Bautista performance feels like an impossible task. The man is a brilliant actor and he has spent the last few years dedicated to his craft and aiming to get better with each role he takes on. Every time he shows up on-screen, you’re not quite sure exactly what he’s going to do, and that’s what makes him stand out from his peers.ย
Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy is Bautista’s most well-known performance. His work in Blade Runner 2049‘s thrilling opening sequence is what you’ll hear come up most when anyone debates his best work. For me, though, it’s one of Bautista’s most recent turns that shines brightest.
In M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin, Bautsita plays a gentle giant named Leonard, a physically imposing man with a heavy heart that has to tell a young family they must kill one of their own if they don’t want the world to end. His physicality and emotional empathy are constantly complimenting one another throughout the performance, allowing Bautista to balance being both terrifying and terrified.ย
1. John Cena – The Suicide Squad (and Peacemaker)
If this list was about ranking the complete acting resumes of professional wrestlers, Bautista would run away with the top spot. But this is about individual performances, and no wrestler has given a better individual acting performance than John Cena.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect much from Cena after seeing him inย 12 Rounds back in 2009. He has spent the years since proving me wrong. The guy has got the tools a great actor needs in their arsenal, and he brought out every single one of them for his turn as Christopher Smith, aka Peacemaker.
James Gunn has said that Cena is one of the most talented actors he’s ever worked with. After The Suicide Squad and a full season of Peacemaker, it’s easy to see why he believes that. Cena will have you crying laughing about a poop joke in one scene, then crying crying over his broken childhood in the next. He’s the perfect performer for a character that’s all about turning examining real masculinity and turning expectations on their heads, and he gives it every ounce he has every time he puts on that ridiculous chrome helmet.