Dwayne Douglas Johnson (born May 2, 1972), also known by his ring name The Rock, is an American actor, producer and professional wrestler. Johnson was a college football player for the University of Miami, where he won a national championship on the 1991 Miami Hurricanes team. After being cut from the Calgary Stampeders of CFL two months into the 1995 season, Johnson began training for a career in professional wrestling, following in the footsteps of various family members, including his grandfather and his father, Rocky Johnson, from whom he inherited Canadian citizenship in 2009.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, Johnson gained mainstream fame in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) from 1996 to 2004 and was the first third-generation wrestler in the company’s history. He returned to WWE part-time from 2011–13 and continues to make sporadic appearances for the company. In wrestling, Johnson’s accomplishments including being an eight time WWF/WWE Champion, two time WCW/World Champion, two time WWF Intercontinental Champion and a five time WWF Tag Team Champion. He is the sixth Triple Crown Champion in WWE and won the 2000 Royal Rumble. Johnson’s autobiography The Rock Says… debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2000.
Johnson’s first leading film role was in The Scorpion King in 2002. For this, he was paid US$5.5 million, a world record for an actor in his first starring role. One of his more prominent roles is Luke Hobbs in The Fast and the Furious franchise. Johnson hosted and produced The Hero, a reality competition series and has since continued to produce TV shows and films through his production company Seven Bucks Productions. In 2013, Forbes listed Johnson No. 25 in the Top 100 Most Powerful Celebrities and has been in the top twenty every year since. He was the world’s highest-paid actor of 2016. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016. In 2015, Muscle & Fitness named Johnson their “Man of the Century”.
