10 Most Successful Athletes-Turned-Actors, Ranked

Not everyone who becomes an actor had that dream since childhood. Or if they did, they didn't take a direct route to getting there. While many successful actors went through the usual steps to build their careers, some were already on other paths before veering into acting, such as the many famous singers turned actors.

But this transition can occur outside of the entertainment industry as well. For example, many actors were originally athletes. Football players, wrestlers, martial artists, and professional bodybuilders have made up many of the key players in action movies over the last five or six decades. Not only that, but some of them have gone on to become some of the most successful actors of all time, period. In determining "success" for the sake of this list, we obviously looked at who made the most at the box office and had the highest-rated TV shows, but we didn't stop there. 

We also considered overall career longevity, number of beloved titles, how popular they were at their peak, and other such metrics that aren't strictly financial. Beyond that, our main criteria is that each person started as an athlete and then became an actor, rather than an already established actor who subsequently took a stab at sports — examples of the latter being Kurt Russell, Mickey Rourke, Paul Newman, et al.

Before turning 20, Jean-Claude Van Damme had already conquered two completely different arenas of athleticism. He was just 18 when he won the Mr. Belgium bodybuilding title, and followed that a year later by being part of the team that won the European Karate Championships as well as finishing second place in a solo karate competition. On top of all of that, Van Damme also spent five years studying ballet.

After a few early acting gigs, Van Damme scored his first lead role in 1985's "No Retreat, No Surrender." But it would be the one-two punch of "Bloodsport" and "Kickboxer" that saw Van Damme become one of the biggest action stars of his era. The cumulative gross of his movies would eventually land him in the billion-dollar club through not only his early action hits but also his later voice roles in animated blockbusters like the "Kung Fu Panda" series and "Minions: Rise of Gru."

Van Damme has shown an admirable self-awareness of his legacy through the movie "JCVD" and the TV series "Jean-Claude Van Johnson," both which see him playing fictionalized versions of himself. 

Not everyone who successfully went from sports to acting became an action hero, and Jason Lee is the perfect example of that. Lee was a professional skateboarder beginning in the late 1980s and into the early '90s, and was a pioneer in bringing a more artistic, avant garde, some might even say hipster dynamic into skate culture. He co-founded the Stereo Sound Agency, which produces not only skateboards and apparel but also skate films and is actually operational — with Lee's continued involvement — to this day. 

While Lee's earliest screen credits are for his appearances in skating videos, he had a few small acting roles before his breakthrough as the lead in Kevin Smith's comedy "Mallrats." After spending a few years working with Smith in the indie world, Lee made the transition to big studio releases like "The Incredibles," "Enemy of the State," "Almost Famous," "Heartbreakers," and more. 

Beginning in 2005, he played the titular role on the surreal NBC sitcom "My Name Is Earl," which brought him numerous award nominations across the show's four-season run.

Of all the sports that serve as springboards into acting, professional wrestling makes the most sense. After all, in addition to their impressive feats of strength and athleticism, wrestlers from brands like WWE are playing characters, as it were. They have dialogue, are part of storylines, and have to be able to put on a convincing performance, whether they are being body slammed or delivering a trash-talking monologue. Essentially, they're already actors.

Still, it's not a given that a wrestler becomes a successful performer. One of the biggest mistakes a lot of wrestlers make is picking the wrong roles. Initially, that looked like it was going to be the case for John Cena. But although Cena's acting debut launched an awful franchise we'd love to forget, he turned things around once he stopped only making WWE-produced movies. The well-received rom com "Trainwreck" proved a turning point for his acting career, as would his lead role in the criminally underrated "Bumblebee."

But once he joined the "Fast & Furious" franchise, and then started playing DC character Peacemaker in both film and television, Cena's acting career was no longer just a side hustle and has only continued to grow. 

There are a number of martial arts actors who don't have a black belt, but that certainly isn't something you can accuse the late Chuck Norris of. Not only did he earn a black belt decades before stepping onto a film set, but he was the very first inductee into the Black Belt Hall of Fame. In the 1960s and '70s, Norris won many global martial arts tournaments, and eventually even created his own martial arts discipline called Chunk Kuk Do before transitioning into teaching the craft. 

So accomplished was Norris in his field that he was cast as the final opponent in a Bruce Lee movie — "The Way of the Dragon" — for his very first screen credit. By the early '80s, he starred in his own movies, and established himself as a pioneer of America's action movie golden age. In the '90s, he made a big shift to the small screen, starring in the hit CBS action drama "Walker, Texas Ranger."

Such was his legacy as both an actor and an all-around tough guy that an entire internet trend — Chuck Norris Facts — sprung up in the 2000s paying homage to that reputation. 

This one might be a bit more "did you know?" than our other entries, but Terry Crews was actually an 11th round NFL draft pick in 1991. He subsequently played for the Los Angeles Rams, the San Diego Chargers, and the Washington Redskins, in addition to spending time on the rosters of – but seeing no on-field action with — the Green Bay Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles. 

All that to say, Crews didn't exactly become a football superstar. But he didn't pivot directly to acting, first taking a detour as T-Money on the 1999 series "Battle Dome" — something of a hybrid of "American Gladiators" and the WWE. That show only lasted two seasons, but by then, Crews had landed his first film role in Arnold Schwarzenegger's "The 6th Day." From there, his acting career was off and running, playing tough guys and henchmen in various early-2000s films.

Crews's breakthrough would be in television comedy, however, as Julius, the patriarch of the sitcom "Everybody Hates Chris." Comedy proved to be his bread and butter, most famously as part of the ensemble of the beloved "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and his scene-stealing turns in the movies "White Chicks" and "Idiocracy."

Though he was far from the first athlete turned actor, the case can be made that Jim Brown was the first to be hugely successful in both fields. He played in the NFL in the 1950s and '60s, and is not only among the best running backs of all time but is often cited among the greatest NFL players in history in any position. As that career was winding down, Brown had already made the move to acting, appearing on both film and TV before he was officially done with the NFL.

There is little denying that Brown's TV and film resume is stacked with classics. He was just a few years into his acting career when he appeared in legendary war film "The Dirty Dozen," as well as cult classic "Ice Station Zebra." He would then spend the '70s as a mainstay of the blaxploitation genre. Brown stayed impressively busy throughout the '80s and '90s, with "The Running Man," "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," "He Got Game," "Mars Attacks!", and "Small Soldiers" being just a few of his many credits from that time. 

Brown's acting career slowed down a bit in the 2000s and beyond, but his legacy of both big budget blockbusters and beloved cult favorites had already been well cemented, spanning nearly 60 years. 

Unlike John Cena, who at this point is still establishing himself as an actor first and wrestler second, Dave Bautista has been more well known as an actor for awhile now. Bautista went from WWE wrestler to Drax the Destroyer, and joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a fan favorite character certainly went a long way in making him a bona fide A-lister. But there's a lot more to Bautista's acting career than just Drax, and he continues to prove that as time goes on.

Bautista first flirted with acting in the mid-2000s. Prominent roles in "Riddick" and "The Man with the Iron Fists" were a step in the right direction, but it would be "Guardians of the Galaxy" that served as his breakthrough. From there, Bautista started beefing up his filmography with "Spectre," "Blade Runner 2049," "Hotel Artemis," "Dune" and "The Naked Gun," all while continuing to make further appearances as Drax. 

While he's got a ways to go before matching the box office success of Dwayne Johnson, there is a growing chorus of people making the argument that Bautista is the actual best wrestler-turned-actor — a chorus that even includes his former WWE colleague and now fellow actor, John Cena. 

While Carl Weathers had intended for football to be his career, he actually laid the groundwork for his backup profession before most people do. After struggling to find his footing in both the NFL and Canadian Football League, Weathers made the most of his off-season downtime by earning his bachelor's degree. And not just any bachelor's degree, but a BA in drama. He worked as an extra for a while before officially calling it quits on football in 1974.

After playing small roles in a few blaxploitation films, Weathers landed his iconic "Rocky" role by insulting Sylvester Stallone while reading for his audition. It obviously worked out, as he would reprise the role for multiple "Rocky" sequels. Even after his character was killed off, Weathers would be just fine, landing "Predator" a few years later before being introduced to a whole new generation as Chubbs Peterson in 1996's "Happy Gilmore."

Weathers continued to rack up film and TV roles over the next 30 years, from voicing Combat Carl in "Toy Story 4" to playing Mark Jeffries across multiple shows in the One Chicago TV franchise. His final screen credit before his 2024 death, Greef Karga in "The Mandalorian," would earn Weathers his first Primetime Emmy nomination.

It's going to be awhile before any other wrestler carves out an acting career as prolific and successful as the one Dwayne Johnson has built. He's been acting for so long now, played so many iconic characters, and starred in so many hits, that there is probably an entire generation that doesn't even know he was ever a wrestler at all — and would be confused if someone referred to him as "The Rock."

Johnson has had so much success at the box office that he is beyond simply the most profitable wrestlers turned actors, or even athletes turned actors. As of 2025, he was still in the top 10 of highest-grossing actors, which is particularly impressive given his last few lean years of sizable hits. Joining the "Fast & Furious" franchise alone has gone a long way in bolstering his bottom line, but he's also done fine thanks to the "Moana" and "Jumanji" series.

Additionally, Johnson has found success on the small screen. He starred in and executive produced the HBO sports drama "Ballers," which ran for five seasons. Johnson also co-created the critically acclaimed autobiographical sitcom "Young Rock," appearing as the future version of himself. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger initially became a household name entirely as a bodybuilder. How many other bodybuilders can you name off the top of your head? After winning numerous bodybuilding and weight lifting awards, Schwarzenegger was the subject of the acclaimed 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron." He had already starred in a movie by that point, "Hercules in New York," but the bulk of the attention it got came after Schwarzenegger became famous. 

Schwarzenegger's true breakthrough as an actor was in 1982, when he starred in "Conan the Barbarian." However, it was with "The Terminator" two years later that laid the groundwork for the massive superstar he was destined to become. "Commando," "Predator," and "The Running Man" would all come before the end of the decade, followed by firing off "Total Recall," "Kindergarten Cop," and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" in rapid succession in 1990 and 1991. 

Like most of his peers, Schwarzenegger struggled to maintain his popularity into the late '90s and beyond, but his legacy was cemented, setting the blueprint for how to go from sports to acting.