Dwayne Carter Johnson is an American actor, producer, businessman, and former professional wrestler who is also known by his ring name The Rock.

He is widely recognized as one of the best professional wrestlers of all time, and he played a crucial role in the growth and success of the WWE during the Attitude Era, the late 1990s and early 2000s period of industry boom. Johnson pursued an acting career after eight years of wrestling for WWE.


But before becoming one of the most recognizable professional wrestlers and ruling the WWE, before he became a star in movies like San Andreas, Furious 7, Baywatch, Central Intelligence, and not to forget "The Mummy Return," before he raised eyebrows, coined catchphrases, and engaged in an epic feud with one "stone cold" Steve Austin.

Here is a quick account of The Rock's life before becoming the best paid actor in the world according to Forbes in 2016.

Dwayne Douglas Johnson, better known as "The Rock," was born on May 2, 1972, in Hayward, California, into a family of accomplished wrestlers. Along with two of Dwayne's uncles and four of his cousins, his grandfather, High Chief, a Samoan, was a wrestler. Rocky, his father, is of African American descent and was raised in Nova Scotia, Canada. Rocky Soulman Johnson is a professional wrestler. Rocky was trained as a boxer. He and his young family would travel the globe in pursuit of wrestling employment as a result of his vocation. Before relocating to Hawaii, they remained in New Zealand for a while, where he attended Richmond Road Primary School. They stayed there for a year before moving once more, this time to Pennsylvania and then to Nashville.

The Rock's family had a reputation for producing wrestlers, but Dwayne was not particularly interested in continuing the tradition. He tried some amateur wrestling but decided it wasn't for him. Instead, he fell in love with football and set his sights on becoming a professional player.

Dwayne struggled to fit in at school because of his enormous size—in his teens, he was six feet four inches tall and 225 pounds—and everyone thought he was an undercover police officer. Dwayne attended four different high schools before he turned 16 as a result of his family's frequent moves, his separation from his peers, and numerous expulsions.

He loved sports, which was a plus for him. Dwayne's loneliness from his friends at Friedman High in Pennsylvania inspired him to take up running track, where he swiftly developed into a pretty talented defensive tackle who received a full scholarship to Miami.

His enormous physique suddenly turned into his best asset, and he accepted a full scholarship to study criminology in Miami. Dwayne seems to have always been a performer. The big guy was doing well in school, had a promising pro football career ahead of him, and had even met a lovely woman named Danny who would later become his wife. However, a sudden back injury forced the big guy to sit out the following season, and soon future NFL star Warren Sapp took his place.


From then, he played for the Calgary Stampeders and the CFL for two months. That is the Canadian version of football, where dreams of playing in the NFL are put to rest.

His football career was abruptly ended. He made the decision to take up wrestling in order to continue the family tradition. He asked his father for advice and training, but Big Rocky told him that he wouldn't be kind with his son if he were to be his coach. Through dad's contacts, a few tryout matches were set up within a year, and Dwayne made his father pleased by winning his first match before going on to win the USA world tag team championship twice that summer.


He committed to the WWE and carried on with his training. He considered a number of names before settling on "The Rock". He first fought as Rocky May Eva, Flex Cavanagh before earning the moniker "The Blue Chipper."

Although he was successful in eliminating tag matches, the audience didn't like what they saw and thought his character was a little too tacky, which is no small feat for the WWE. 

The Rock set out to revamp his image despite the jeers and hostility from his audience because he could smell something fantastic cooking. He began referring to himself as "The Rock" and the champion of the people. then made the decision to reopen his long-running conflict with Stone Cold (Steve Austin).

Over time, he developed the ability to captivate audiences with his smack talk, flair, and catchphrases, oh! He was also very, very good at doing the eyebrow thing.

The Rock won the wrestling champion


ship in 2000, and soon after that, he was invited to host an episode of Saturday Night Live, which is quite an honor considering that at the time, they didn't accept many athletes.

He still sees potential in the Charismatic leading man, and he quickly got work on both that 1970s program and "Star Trek Voyager." However, it was his work on "The Mummy Returns" and then his 5.5 million dollar salary on "The Scorpion King" that cemented him as a major player in the entertainment industry.