A Piece Of The Rock

Dwayne Johnson is already the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. By turning himself into a marketing channel, he’s figured out a way to make millions more.

- Natalie Robehmed

Dwayne Johnson clenches his granite jaw as he squints into the distance. A bead of sweat drips down his forehead before he throws back his head in a belly-shaking laugh. It’s a sweltering summer day in Atlanta, and The Rock is on set doing what The Rock does best. He licks his lips, delivers his lines with panache and swaggers his hulking 6-foot-5 frame out of the shot.

Johnson is rarely out of focus these days. In the last decade, the 46-year-old former professional wrestler has leveraged his indefatigable charm — the kind that drives him, only half-jokingly, to float himself as a potential presidential candidate — to become Hollywood’s most bankable star. His acting earnings last year — the vast majority of his $124 million haul — are the largest-ever recorded in the 20 years Forbes has tracked the Celebrity 100 and nearly double the $65 million he earned in 2017.

“The number one goal is to create stuff for the world,” says Johnson, sitting in his air-conditioned trailer in a blue polka-dot shirt and jeans. In other words, ubiquity. Besides a stream of movies, there’s his hit HBO series, Ballers, and one of the shrewdest strategies on social media. On Instagram, where he has more than 108 million followers, he delivers inspirational videos of himself talking directly to his iPhone, often in his traveling gym. Other posts — leveraging another 13 million Twitter followers and 58 million on Facebook — introduce movie trailers, show Johnson in development meetings and celebrate his “cheat day” pancake stack, all decorated with multiple hashtags and millions of likes.