The Rock said his experience cutting promos and performing live in WWE played an important role in his move to Hollywood. Speaking on Go with Elmo Lovano, he explained that pro wrestling taught him to listen to the crowd and adjust his performance to how it reacted.
Rock pointed out that performing for thousands of people in an arena requires a different approach than making movies. Even so, he believes the experience gave him a skill that is essential to his acting career.
“It’s like it forces you, it’s almost like a forcing mechanism to listen.”
He said wrestling demands constant attention to how the crowd is behaving, forcing whoever is in the ring to react in real time to whatever is happening around them.
This is not the first time Rock has connected his WWE promos to his start in Hollywood. In a 2002 interview with Film Threat, he said his first time hosting Saturday Night Live, in March 2000, was the key to the movie offers that started coming in.
On that episode, Rock made a point of playing characters different from the ones he played in WWE. Years later, he told E! News what he had requested from producer Lorne Michaels.
“I would like to play as many characters as possible that aren’t wrestlers because I am a wrestler, and I play a wrestler every week.”
The strategy worked. Rock said he began receiving scripts from Hollywood after that appearance. At the time, WWE reported that the episode averaged 10.4 million viewers, according to an NBC estimate, making it the most-watched episode of the season to that point.
Rock had landed small roles on TV series such as That ’70s Show in 1999 and Star Trek: Voyager in 2000. His first film was The Mummy Returns in 2001, followed by The Scorpion King in 2002, which gave him his first leading role.