8 Best Dwayne Johnson Performances, Ranked

In the wake of the infamous DC Comics film "Black Adam," a 15-year passion project upon which star Dwayne Johnson planned several future years of his career, and the creative disappointments of "Red Notice" and "Red One" (a financial disaster everyone saw coming from a mile away), it had become clear to audiences that Johnson had damaged his acting career by chasing the box office. The historically charismatic, captivating, and surprisingly comedic actor had traded complicated characters for soft, flattering caricatures of his public persona. The only difference between the Johnson audiences saw in "Red One" and the Johnson seen on Fox News that year is that the former shouts a little more (and pushes his tequila more aggressively, too). By the time the audience caught on, it seemed too late for Johnson to convince them that he'd rise even to the performance level of the WWE — even when he revived his The Rock character in 2023.

But this isn't the first time he's had to recover from a box office failure. After making his acting debut in "The Mummy Returns," he headlined "The Scorpion King" in 2002, a massive and infamously regrettable picture that Johnson smartly followed up with more human roles in smaller, character-driven dramas and action thrillers that played to his strengths as an actor. In 2025, Johnson returned to the ring in an even more vulnerable fashion for Benny Safdie's Mark Kerr biopic "The Smashing Machine," clearly trying to convince audiences that he wasn't just good enough to star in massive films, but was worthy of an Academy Award. So where does his portrayal of Mark Kerr rank among the rest of his filmography? We'll have to dive through the best — and often overlooked — roles of his career to find out.

There are plenty of Dwayne Johnson roles on this list that fans consider to be underrated. Out of all of them, I'd argue his character in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" is the most criminally overlooked. The 2017 legacy sequel to the 1995 Robin Williams cult classic (about a cursed board game that changes the world around it) smartly updates the lore and storytelling style by morphing Jumanji into a video game that can suck players into its own dangerous world. As part of this conceit, Dwayne Johnson is effectively playing two characters on top of one another. As a baseline, he's Dr. Smolder Bravestone, a hulking, overpowered video game protagonist that plays like a cross between Nathan Drake and the "Doom Guy;" however, though Johnson does all the performance work for Bravestone in the film, the character in the game is being played by Alex Wolff's Spencer Gilpin, an awkward, nerdy teenager who struggles to talk to girls. Simply put, Johnson is a dude playing a dude digitally disguised as another dude.

"Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" is surprisingly fun overall, but more surprising still is how convincingly Johnson embodies a nervous teen, altering his voice in a thin, slightly pitched manner while using subdued, reserved body language throughout. He makes himself so improbably small, which, when juxtaposed against his massive frame, is perfect comedy. At the same time, during the action sequences (when the Bravestone persona seems to take over more) he has to go full-on adventurer. He finds the limits of this gimmick in the sequel with a so-so Danny DeVito impression, but it takes nothing away from the hilarious work seen in the first film.

Almost 15 years before "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" introduced Johnson to a new stage of his career focused on establishing him as a bankable, franchiseable, retail global action star, another feature — internationally marketed as "Welcome to the Jungle," but known as "The Rundown" in America — helped save Johnson's career from the CGI meltdown that was "The Scorpion King" by taking things back to basics. "The Rundown" is a fine film, and actually stands as one of the best of Johnson's early years, but the performance in the leading role reads like the actor is still working out the last kinks of his ring-to-screen journey. By the following year, however, Johnson seemingly used the experience to fully come into his own in "Walking Tall."

The 2004 vigilante neo-Western action flick stars Johnson as Chris Vaughn, a character loosely (and somewhat appropriately) inspired by Buford Pusser, a wrestler-turned-sheriff who became a sensation in the '60s for cracking down on crime in Tennessee. As a film, "Walking Tall" is narratively and morally shaky, both in its bleak interpretation of the role of law enforcement in civil society and, damningly, due to the fact that evidence was discovered in 2025 that may implicate Pusser in his wife's murder. Suffice it to say, watching "Walking Tall" today is difficult. But as far as Johnson's acting goes, it deserves to be included in recognition of him fully earning his place in Hollywood, confidently carrying the film on his own and going toe-to-toe with complementary co-stars like Neal McDonough and Johnny Knoxville. He doesn't necessarily reinvent the wheel, but he finds his own brand of action star through a script that finds his strengths and plays to them consistently.

By the time "Snitch" hit theaters in 2013, Johnson was a household name and mainstream actor — though, perhaps not in the way he wanted. His most successful films as a leading actor were relatively forgettable family films, and while his foray into the "Fast and Furious" universe as a supporting actor remains a career highlight, his attempts at leading adult action flicks like "Faster" and "Doom" (a video game adaptation co-starring Karl Urban) were not commercial hits. With the world of comedy also seeing Johnson as a supporting player in films like "Get Smart" and "The Other Guys," the actor clearly needed to shake things up.

"Snitch" was one of five different films that Johnson played a leading role in that year, each showing off a different side of the actor that could carry his career to the next stage. And while "Furious 6"  was certainly the most popular product, "Snitch" arguably establishes who Dwayne Johnson became once he left The Rock behind. Sure, it's the sort of film where 90% of the male cast have two first names, as well as one that thinks we need to spend a minute watching Johnson's "John Matthews" read the Wikipedia page for "drug cartel," but Johnson grounds the film by blending the paternal heart he'd honed in those family comedies with the lone-warrior stoicism that anchored his early work. It was a smart choice as an actor at the time, even if this characterization would seemingly become something of a crutch in later films. Though the environment of "Snitch" is nearly identical to the mid-budget crime thrillers audiences were accustomed to seeing Johnson lead, this turn added depth that then felt novel, allowing the film to stand out at a critical point in his career.

"Gridiron Gang" was one of two football-centric movies Johnson was cast in back-to-back in 2006 and 2007. In another life, Johnson was a serious football player himself, a promising defensive lineman for the Miami Hurricanes during a period of dominance for the team in the '90s. However, before he could seriously angle himself toward the NFL career he had aspired to since he started playing in high school, the future actor experienced an unfortunately timed shoulder injury that, while not career-ending physically, brought about the same result regardless, as Johnson's recovery opened the door for his starting job to be taken by newcomer Warren Sapp (a future NFL star who won Defensive Player of the Year in 1999 and helped give Tampa Bay their first Super Bowl win in 2003).

There's something healing for Johnson to be able to revisit the sport as an actor, and you can tell in "Gridiron Gang." He stars in the film (based on the documentary of the same name) as Sean Porter, a correctional officer working at a juvenile detention center in Los Angeles who attempts to rehabilitate perpetrators of gang violence by coaching them on an all-inmate football squad. It was a perfect role for Johnson after a string of action movies, showing the actor as capable of leading a film as a truly aspirational, human protagonist as opposed to a bullet-proof antihero. His scrappy, relentless dedication to the kids on his team evoked a bit of the Coach Taylor magic from the then-recent "Friday Night Lights" (likely intentional, as the NBC sports drama had just started to take off around that time). It's a real pleasure to watch him embody a normal guy without all the Rock-isms that haunt his performances today, even if the movie itself is only so-so.

When Dwayne Johnson was cast in Disney's "Moana" in the late 2010s, some people were understandably apprehensive. Even putting aside the conversation about whether or not voice roles are best left to practiced voice actors, Johnson was not known for having a particularly memorable or distinct voice, much less for being able to extend its range past the action-star growl. At the time, he had only lent his voice to one other animated feature — 2009's "Planet 51," in which he starred as an American astronaut who gets stranded on an Earth-like planet that views him as a hostile invader. Neither that film nor Johnson's performance leave much of an impression.

"Moana," on the other hand, is an entirely different story. Perhaps because he was approaching the peak of his movie star powers, or maybe because a hilariously narcissistic demigod suited his self-image more than a hapless astronaut, Johnson sounds infinitely more comfortable in his role as Maui. It's a supporting role, certainly, but one that threatens to steal the entire film because of how powerfully Johnson's vocal instrument translates his incomparable on-screen presence to the animated medium. The film even has the audacity to introduce him through a literally self-mythologizing musical number that requires the actor — famously not a reliable singer by any means — to belt his heart out with unshakeable confidence. Does it sound at least a little autotuned? Of course. Is he stage-ready for the Broadway transfer? No. But does it absolutely crush every time the film reaches that point in the story? 100% — and all on the strength of Johnson's performance and demigodly charisma alone. I suppose the real test of Johnson's work as Maui will be when the actor reprises his role in the live-action "Moana" film.

There are some reading this list who will passionately argue that Luke Hobbs is the greatest role of Dwayne Johnson's career — and to a certain extent, I can agree. As a character, Hobbs has grown into a definitive aspect of Johnson's resume, with the actor returning to him at various stages in his career almost as a guidepost, for better and for worse. They've changed together over the years as a result, resembling one another more and more with each installment. In terms of performance alone, however, only one Johnson-Hobbs flick deserves to be on this list — and though some of you may feel it deserves to take the top spot, we simply feel Johnson does stronger leading work in two other movies.

For now, the film we're talking about is "Fast Five," the pinnacle of the "Fast and Furious" franchise as a whole and without a doubt one of the greatest action movies ever made. In the 2011 Justin Lin film, Johnson's Hobbs is deceptively unhinged. Both because of his history leading grounded action thrillers and the fact that the rest of the cast delivers simple performances like those of Johnson's early career, one would expect the actor to coast rather successfully on the energy he brought to "Walking Tall." Instead, Johnson goes full cartoon antihero, barking orders and catchphrases with an impossibly self-serious tone while stomping around the set as though he could break concrete simply by stepping through it. Played by any other actor, Hobbs would come off as laughably goofy. By Johnson, though, Hobbs is immediately one the best characters in the franchise, dominating any scene he's in with absolute ease. "Fast X" saw Johnson revive the beloved "Fast Five" version of the character, goatee and all.

At the beginning of 2025, I would've said with my full heart and chest that Dwayne Johnson's best performance of all time was in "Pain and Gain." The grossly underrated Michael Bay film was released in 2013, during that same explosive year of experimentation that saw Johnson star in "Snitch." "Pain and Gain," however, stands out as proof that the mad genius of the "Transformers" franchise saw The Rock as a serious dramatic actor earlier than most in Hollywood.

Sure, stoic roles like Chris Vaughn or Sean Porter read like the dictionary definitions of serious dramatic characters on paper, but history has proven that audiences are far more entertained, intrigued, moved, and enlightened by truly complex, larger-than-life characters like Johnson's Paul Doyle. Based on several real-life figures who inspired "Pain and Gain," Doyle is an ex-convict who reformed himself by violently beating up his fellow inmates in the name of Jesus Christ himself. After being released from prison and struggling to find a means of supporting his bodybuilding addiction, he joins Mark Wahlberg's Daniel Lugo and Anthony Mackie's Adrian "Noel" Doorbal in a kidnapping and extortion scheme that goes horribly wrong (the film is basically a Coen Brothers crime tragicomedy on steroids).

Despite Johnson's fine work, his earliest roles are textually comparable to the people you'd see Steven Seagal play. Doyle, on the other hand, is a singular masterpiece from pen to page to picture — a morally vacant, often amazingly stupid, yet strangely endearing muscle head that requires the actor to leave himself defenseless to the audience's sympathy, judgement, and ridicule. It's a perfect synthesis of Bay and the screenwriters' ("Avengers: Endgame" scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley) visions, and a performance that only Johnson could have delivered.

What is there to say about Dwayne Johnson's performance in "The Smashing Machine" that hasn't already been said ... by the film's marketing department? Clearly, after the admittedly ludicrous amount of punishment the actor absorbed from critics throughout the early 2020s, with many comparing him unfavorably to newer wrestlers-turned-actors John Cena and Dave Bautista while questioning his place in the entertainment industry at large, Johnson wanted to make it clear that he still aspired to be a truly great actor. And to his credit, while the ads did go a bit overboard focusing on his work, they stopped just short of insisting on Johnson's greatness — they insisted on his effort.

It's a message that poetically mirrors that of "The Smashing Machine" in a way, with Johnson leaving every ounce of himself on the mat to embody MMA trailblazer Mark Kerr, whose own efforts resulted in relatively little material success compared to those that followed in his footsteps. Johnson's work in the film is simply phenomenal, particularly because he finds real humanity in Kerr outside the ring. He isn't portrayed just as a stoic fighter or pro athlete — instead, Johnson follows writer-director Benny Safdie's lead in focusing on Kerr's deeply held insecurities, mental health struggles, and uncertain, codependent feelings for his longtime partner (played by Emily Blunt). Sadly, the film was not a smash at the box office — but that was never the point for Johnson. This film was a rededication to the craft, a promise to audiences that he would chase the best version of himself rather than their wallets. Given that he now has a Martin Scorsese movie on the horizon, we'd argue he's on the right path — and maybe even on the way to an Academy Award nomination.