7 Sport Stars Who Tried To Break Hollywood

7. Hulk Hogan

Pro wrestling is perhaps the easiest, and most obvious, gateway sport for athletes to become actors. At its very nature, wrestling is all about performance and selling your character to the audience. This should mean, if you're successful at wrestling, it stands to reason you can be successful at acting, right? Well, let me tell you something Mean Gene: You're wrong, brother.

Being a massive star in the WWF and propelling wrestling to popular culture, the Hulkster attempted to run wild over Hollywood in the eighties and nineties, which began well with his 1982 debut as Thunderlips in Rocky III, but ended miserably with a guest appearance as himself on long-forgotten Brooke Shields sitcom, Suddenly Susan. Sandwiched somewhere in-between all this was Mr. Nanny, which if you have never watched (apart from THAT YouTube clip), you must do immediately. If only just to see the way that Hogan delivers the line "Dookie." Seriously, it's next level bonkers.

Hogan never quite managed to reach the startling acting heights that some of his wrestling proteges have now scaled. Wrestlers like The Rock and, uh, Stone Cold? No. The Miz? Definitely not. Cena? Kane? Santino Marella? Hmm. Maybe wrestlers working in films isn't the quick win it would at first appear to be. But damn, we'll always have Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live to remind us of how it should be done.