Athletes Who Turned To Hollywood Careers

It's easy to think of sports and film as two very different industries, but the truth is, both exist for the sake of entertainment. And as it turns out, if you're good at putting on an athletic show, you just might be good at acting, too. The performance, showmanship, and persona-building skills required to become a star athlete have helped many sports professionals move on to successful careers in Hollywood. Athletes have been trying their hand at acting for as long as both endeavors have been around. Even in the ancient world, sports competition served as entertainment whereby gifted athletes became highly-praised celebrities. 

Savvy Hollywood executives sought to profit from athletes' fame early on in the film industry, creating whole genres based on the talents of figure skater Sonja Henie and champion swimmer Esther Williams. Later, wrestlers like André the Giant paved the way for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and John Cena to build acting careers from WWE fame. And when you have as massive star power as Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal had in the 1990s, it would have been nearly impossible to resist Hollywood's hoards of cash to make a few movies. Let's take a closer look at the variety of athletes, from wrestlers to football players to skateboarders to ballerinas, who have successfully pursued Hollywood careers.

The name Michael Jordan is practically synonymous with basketball. He reigned in the 1980s and 1990s when he played on the Chicago Bulls, earning well-deserved recognition as a 5-time MVP Award winner in the NBA, also being named an All-Star a whopping 14 times! 

In the '90s, Michael Jordan was already one of the most famous people in the world — a study commissioned by Warner Bros. put him right up there with the Pope and Princess Diana (via ESPN). Jordan's acting stint in "Space Jam" remains one of the most memorable moments of his legacy. According to The Washington Post, the basketball legend had rejected several movie offers throughout his career. Jordan's manager, David Falk, told the publication, "I always used to tell him when we'd turn the deals down, 'You can't act. There is only one role for you.'" That role, of course, was the role of Michael Jordan, so "Space Jam," in which he plays a fictional version of himself, technically fit that criteria.

Jim Riswold, the creator of the "Hare Jordan" commercial that initially sparked the idea for the movie, told The Washington Post, "It's a marketing idea first, and a movie, maybe ninth." Even if Michael Jordan's brief silver screen career was more of a layered marketing plan than it was an acting pursuit, the box office numbers ($230 million to be exact) and the cultural impact of the film made it nothing short of a Hollywood blockbuster and definitely opened up the door for other basketball players to star in movies.

Sonja Henie was a women's figure skating trailblazer in the 1920s. Not only did she beautifully blend ballet into her skating routines long before it was the norm to do so; she was also fearlessly the first woman to wear a skirt above her knees in the rink and initiated the tradition of wearing white skates, per Vanity Fair. Born in Norway, she became a teenage skating star and won a gold medal at the 1928 Olympics when she was only 15, doing so again in 1932 and 1936.

Soon she set her sights on Hollywood. "I want to go into pictures, and I want to skate in them. ... I want to do with skates what Fred Astaire is doing with dancing. No one has ever done it in the movies and I want to," she told The New York Times in a 1936 interview. Twentieth Century Fox was ready and willing to cash in on the idea, and that same year, Henie starred in her first of many popular ice skating-centric movies, "One in a Million." She was one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1930s and 1940s, starring in over a dozen films.

Before Arnold Schwarzenegger became an action star and the governor of California, he was a professional bodybuilder. Born in Austria, he declared, "I want to be the best-built man in the world!" when he was only 13, according to his official website. With determination and brute force, he made his dreams come true, winning the title of Mr. Olympia 7 times and Mr. Universe 4 times during his professional bodybuilding career spanning the '60s and '70s, per Britannica.

He carved a new path in the bodybuilding world. "I had a different approach. I hired a publicist in '74... I started this fitness crusade, because I realized the whole movement needed explanation. So I did endless seminars, I wrote books, I did TV interviews, 'Pumping Iron,'" he explained to Men's Health. The persona he created along with his impressive build led him to a related career after he retired: an action movie star. Though technically Schwarzenegger starred in his first movie in 1970 with "Hercules in New York," he didn't find his Hollywood footing until starring in 1982's "Conan the Barbarian," his breakout role. He enjoyed a fruitful film career for over a decade starring in films including "The Terminator," "Kindergarten Cop," and "Batman and Robin" before eventually turning to politics, which one might note is yet another career bordering on the entertainment business.

You might know her as Cara Dune from Disney's "The Mandalorian," or from the films "Haywire," "Fast & Furious 6," and "In the Blood." But long before she was an action star, Gina Carano was a mixed martial arts fighter dubbed the "face of women's MMA," per UFC. Her popularity in the sport was unparalleled. According to the official UFC website, she was frequently searched online in 2008 and made a Yahoo! top ten list as the fifth most influential woman. By 2009, she had also made the list for Maxim's "Hot 100," coming in at number 16.

Hollywood soon came knocking on her door. Her first lead role came after Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh saw one of her fights on TV and promptly reached out to her agent. He wanted her for the lead role in his film "Haywire," and Carano was surprised to find how much she enjoyed acting. "I always was attracted to fighting because of the intimate experience that it is and the adrenaline that you get off of it. I didn't know that that same feeling can be put into acting and not being choked out or...not having to hurt anybody to do it," she explained in an interview with Hollywood Streams.

However, things haven't always gone her way. Carano was famously fired from "The Mandalorian" in 2021 after a string of offensive tweets.

Born in California, Jason Lee started skateboarding at a young age. "Growing up in Huntington Beach, you were either a traditional sports athlete, a skateboarder, or a surfer. I got my first skateboard when I was five," he explained in an interview with IGN. He became a professional at the sport in the late '80s. His skateboarding career spanned the rise of the sport's popularity, and he was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2019.

By the mid-'90s, however, he had grown weary of skateboarding and was ready to move onto other things. When he landed a role in the 1995 movie "Mallrats," he realized acting might be his next move, though he was never too serious about it. "I was still naive, and I didn't have that confidence that comes [from] experience," he told IGN, adding, "That's why I was able to get into acting as easily as I did, because I wasn't jaded." Pretty soon, he was landing one project after another, including "Chasing Amy," "Almost Famous," "Alvin and the Chipmunks," and the Emmy-winning TV comedy series "My Name is Earl."

Before Esther Williams was Hollywood's mermaid movie star, she was an athlete with a dream of Olympic gold. A champion swimmer by the time she was in her teens, Williams was slated to compete in the 1940 Olympics until they were canceled due to World War II, per Britannica. "My dreams were crushed," she said in her 1999 autobiography "The Million Dollar Mermaid, clarifying, "a minor thing in comparison to the horrors that soon engulfed the world, but to a teenage girl the world can seem very small. It would not be until 1948 that the Olympics would be held again. By then, I was among the top ten box office stars in the world. Stardom would be my consolation prize."

According to The New York Times, Williams was performing at a San Francisco World's Fair aquacade when a talent scout discovered her. He immediately recognized the potential of turning her swimming skills into silver screen success. Williams went on to star in over 20 films. Most of them were aqua musicals, a genre MGM created specifically for her. These films were composed of extravagant swimming choreography and impressive underwater ballets. The popularity of her movies at the time is often credited with creating a public interest in synchronized swimming.

André René Roussimoff, more commonly known as André the Giant, was already famous as a professional wrestler and "eighth wonder of the world" before he made his way to the silver screen. Standing at 7'4," Roussimoff's gigantism was due to the fact that he was born with the hormonal disorder acromegaly.

He viewed his size as a unique opportunity to leave the French farm life he was born into and find a different calling in the world. "With the size I have, I started being involved with sports and with that I'm traveling all over the world and met lots of people," he said on "The Don Lane Show." He told the talk show host that he had been interested in sports since he was 9 years old, trying his hand at soccer, boxing, and rugby before finding his way to wrestling. In 1974, he was named the world's highest-paid wrestler by "The Guinness Book of World Records" (via "André the Giant: A Legendary Life" by Michael Krugman).

The wrestling ring brought worldwide fame to Roussimoff, and that fame led him to acting. André The Giant's role as Fezzick in the 1987 film "The Princess Bride" is undoubtedly his most memorable. Other roles include the 1967 French film "Casse-tête chinois pour le judoka," guest appearances on several TV series, and the 1994 movie "Trading Mom." 

Though nowadays Caitlyn Jenner's controversial moments and reality show appearances eclipse the star's career, she was once primarily known for her Olympic endeavors. A decathlete, Jenner participated in football and track in college before shifting interests to the Olympic decathlon, for which she qualified in 1972, according to Britannica. By 1976, she was the number 1 decathlete in the world, won the gold medal, and broke the world record at the time, per The New York Times. Her Olympic achievements resulted in worldwide recognition, even gracing the front of a cereal box, one of the true tests of athletic fame.

As Jenner's fame grew, it sparked an interest in a possible movie career. Her acting debut came in 1980 with "Can't Stop the Music," a musical movie extravaganza starring The Village People. It was a disastrous box-office flop and a critical failure. In a review of the movie, Variety noted, "Director Nancy Walker clearly had trouble with the non-actors in the cast. The Village People, along with ex-Olympic decathlon champion [Caitlyn] Jenner, have a long way to go in the acting stakes." The film pretty much ended Jenner's acting career before it began, though she did make guest appearances on several TV shows throughout the 1980s, including "CHiPs."

Terry Bradshaw was a seriously skilled football player in high school, which led him to collegiate success and eventually landed him a spot on the Pittsburgh Steelers, per Britannica. He was the quarterback for the Steelers for over a decade. During his time on the team, the Steelers won an impressive four Super Bowls.

His first acting gig was the Burt Reynolds film "Hooper." In his memoir, "It's Only a Game," Bradshaw explained, "...it was actually Burt Reynolds who gave me my first movie role. Burt Reynolds and I became friends after he apologized for making jokes about my intelligence, and in 1977 he offered me a part in a movie he was making..." Acting became a fun side hustle for Bradshaw, especially after his football career ended. "Of course I wasn't an actor, I was just acting like one," he confessed in his memoir, adding, "...I wasn't very good at it. But I definitely did enjoy it. Like most other things in my life other than family, football, and my ranch, I didn't really take it very seriously. The opportunity was offered to me because of my football popularity, and I accepted it."

Bradshaw has gone on to have a long on-screen career, especially in the comedic realm, appearing in sitcoms such as "Blossom," "Married... With Children," and "Malcolm in the Middle" and feature film comedies including "Failure to Launch" and "Father Figures." No wonder Terry Bradshaw's net worth is seriously impressive.

Considering she's best-known for her role in the 2000 movie, "Center Stage," it isn't too surprising to learn that Amanda Schull has a dance background. However, unlike many actors who will intensely train to learn new skills for certain roles, Schull was a real professional ballerina with no acting experience when she starred in the film.

The ballerina-turned-actor was dancing for the San Francisco Ballet when a casting director discovered her, according to Entertainment Weekly. Nicholas Hytner, the director of "Center Stage," wanted a real ballerina to play the role. "He was a huge ballet fan and somebody else who didn't know ballet...probably would have hired someone and just had dance doubles. I was really fortunate that he championed for me," she explained to the publication.

After "Center Stage," she sought more acting roles following her 2006 dance retirement, per People. She's been a full-time actor since, with recurring roles on TV series "Suits," "Pretty Little Liars," "One Tree Hill," and a starring role in Syfy's "12 Monkeys." But she never completely abandoned ballet. "Ballet is now a form of relaxation for me," she told HILUXURY in a 2015 interview, noting that she especially enjoyed contemporary ballet styles.