Is Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as big of a movie star as Will Smith?
In order to understand how big of a movie star Will Smith is, we only have to recall that slap incident with Chris Rock and how he still picked up his Oscar in thunderous applause. That level of stardom is nearly impossible to understand, only a handful of names are as big as Will Smith is in the movie business. We can name people like Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Johnny Depp, and a few more alongside Will Smith. Bad press matters to movie stars like them but at the end of the day, it doesn’t hurt them as much as one would imagine. Dwayne Johnson has been getting similar bad press lately with all his issues in the DCEU.
Is Dwayne Johnson on Will Smith’s level of stardom?
Simply judging by star power alone, Dwayne Johnson is currently more popular than Will Smith is. However, the Philadelphia native has been an actor for over 30 years and his career path has been different to Johnson’s. Dwayne started his career as a WWE super star and then he made the transition. Acting chops are typical of an action star but The Rock still has a long way to improve if he wants to get nominations as Will Smith has gotten throughout the better part of his acting career. Not that he will never get there but he has been an actor for less time than Smith has. This takes us to an anecdote that will inevitably lead to everybody asking themselves if Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is as big of a movie star as Will Smith.
As it turns out, Dwayne Johnson’s first agency that worked for him during his first steps as an actor actually laughed at him. He told them that he wanted to become as big a movie star as Will Smith. Johnson revealed this during a conference he offered to Los Angeles Lakers players. He said: “Will Smith is my boy but at that time I sat down with the agency that I was with, and they said what do you want to accomplish? I said, I want to accomplish the world, I want the world and I want Will Smith’s career, but I want to do it bigger and better. And they looked at me like I had three heads. And they were like, Umm, yea, okay.”
