For WrestleMania: The Five Best Acting Jobs By Wrestlers

You can act like Houston hosting one of the biggest sporting events of the year isn't that big a deal, but 70,000 screaming whack-jobs with rage issues descending upon our fair city from the four corners of the earth would probably disagree. And if you think wrestling contributes nothing of value to the culture at large, you obviously aren't aware of the cinema adventures of some of the "sport's" greatest talents:

5. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper - They Live (1988) By appearing in this -- John Carpenter's last decent film -- and Hell Comes to Frogtown, Piper has secured a position in the geek firmament that could only be challenged by likes of Richard Dean Anderson. Or maybe Denise Ryan.



4. El Santo - Santo and Blue Demon Against the Monsters (1970) Scoff if you must, but while other guys on the list may have battled aliens or evil princes, none of them had the stones to fight Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein's monster, or a Cyclopean zombie...all in the same movie. El Santo is, and forever shall be, El Hombre:



3. Jesse "The Body" Ventura - Predator (1987) Blain is one of the great gay characters in cinema history, and Mac's (Bill Duke) mournful soliloquy following his death puts Ryan O'Neal crying over Ali MacGraw to shame.



2. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - The Rundown (2003) Johnson is easily the most marketable wrestler-turned-actor to come down the pike since, well, Hulk Hogan. Unlike Hogan, The Actor Formerly Known as the Rock actually has some chops. He also has the most overt agenda for getting famous since, well, Linda Hogan.



1. Andre the Giant - The Princess Bride (1986) Andre's condition (acromegaly) meant he'd never be cast as anything but the heavy (he played Bigfoot on The Six Million Dollar Man, for crying out loud), but plenty of people were surprised at his portrayal of the gentle Fezzik, even if we were secretly hoping he'd give Prince Humperdinck the patented tombstone piledriver.