Do you smell what The Rock is cookin’? Well, Hollywood did, but it wasn’t for a lack of Dwayne Johnson not only trying but challenging his image to ensure his career turned out exactly how he wanted.

When Dwayne Johnson first tried to make it in Hollywood, he came across criticisms not for his acting but his look, remembering being told, ‘If you wanna be a leading man, you’re too big; you can’t go to the gym, you have to lose weight, you gotta go on a diet.’ And if you don’t know any better, then you buy into it, so I started to question myself then. Some of those films at the time I was making, I think, reflect that. And then a moment came where I said, ‘’Excuse my language but f**k that, I’m not doing this anymore, I’m gonna do myself. And if I fail, then I can fail being me.’”

Dwayne Johnson has a filmography full of clunkers but he has pretty much avoided failure at the box office, with his lead performances taking in more than $5 billion worldwide, according to The Numbers. And he’ll only add to his box office intake this month, as he has two features out in November: holiday action-comedy Red One (November 15th) and Moana 2 (November 27th), which, judging by the original’s ~$700 million worldwide haul, is going to be another smash. And none of it would have happened without his dropping a People’s Elbow on the haters. “A funny thing happened when I said, ‘Ah, f*ck all this’: career [skyrocketed]. I became acutely aware of the power of being authentic and being real.”

As such, at this point, Dwayne Johnson can do pretty much whatever he wants, calling the shots and dictating the stipulations (even if it puts him at odds with his co-stars…). That’s the sort of power that no other pro wrestler-turned-actor has been able to pull off. You think Suburban Commando made people want to see Hulk Hogan anywhere outside of the squared circle?

How do you feel about Dwayne Johnson as an actor? Do you think his onscreen presence matches what he had in the ring?

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