Having conquered the professional wrestling industry despite spending less than seven years as a full-time performer, cementing his reputation as one of the all-time greats in the process, Dwayne Johnson set his sights on Hollywood, and he’s managed to conquer Tinseltown, too.
It’s taken him a lot longer to dominate the silver screen than the squared circle, but 20 years after making his feature film debut in The Mummy Returns, Johnson is now arguably the single biggest movie star on the planet, and he’s definitely the highest-paid. A one-man marketing and publicity machine, the 48 year-old’s Seven Bucks empire has expanded into reality television, prestige HBO drama, scripted sitcoms, energy drinks and tequila, while he even spearheaded the consortium which purchased bankrupt football league the XFL.
Having experienced such huge success twice over, you wonder what’s left for the man to accomplish, and politics could be the answer. Johnson has repeatedly teased running for office one day, and given his overwhelming popularity, you’d imagine there are an awful lot of people who would be willing to hand him their vote. However, Stephen Colbert isn’t one of them, and he explained why he’s against the idea.
“Look folks, I love Dwayne ‘Rock’ the Johnson as much as the next middle-aged man who loves Fast Cars Go Zoom. But for the love of Ludacris, Dwayne! We don’t need another celebrity in the White House! Just because people love something doesn’t mean we should hand it the nuclear codes! That’s why we’ve never elected President Surprise Onion Ring in Your French Fries. Besides, we’ve already have a couple of Presidents Johnson. We’d have to call his administration 2 POTUS 2 Prez: Executive Drift.”
There are definitely similarities to be drawn between Dwayne Johnson and Donald Trump, not least because they both competed at WrestleMania. They’ve also hosted their own reality shows and gained hundreds of millions of followers on social media, but the latter’s roles in The Little Rascals and Home Alone 2 can’t match the former’s streak of consistent smash hit movies. Whether or not he ends up gunning for the highest office in the land, we’ll just have to wait and see, but you certainly wouldn’t bet against him at this stage.
