F9 star John Cena said he was concerned the early movies he made as a WWE wrestler would ruin his budding career in Hollywood.
"I thought after all those bad movies, I thought I was done," Cena told entertainment journalist Chris Van Vliet. "Fifteen years later, I got a second chance at the movie business. We're here talking about Fast 9. That's amazing, man, but it comes through absolute fall-on-your-face failure."
Cena said he starred in 2006's The Marine at the behest of WWE chairman Vince McMahon because another WWE star, Steve Austin, opted out. Cena said, "Vince was like, 'Hey, I need you to go to Australia' — this is like two weeks before shooting — and explained that if we can bolster WWE Studios, we will bolster live event attendance, so we can do larger buildings and we can be more widespread, and like, 'This guy's on to something, all right. Let's go do this thing so I can get back to the ring.'"
"That's the wrong approach to take," Cena said, "but I continued to take that approach to the movies that I did, and in turn, I did a lot of bad movies." He then started doing cameos in non-WWE films, such as the Fred series, Trainwreck and Sisters. This taught him to make films not as vehicles to promote other projects but as "creative fun" and outlets to adopt other characters.
"So I just really had to change my perception, and that came with tremendous failure," Cena said.
Directed by Justin Lin, F9 stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, John Cena, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jordana Brewster, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren, Kurt Russell and Charlize Theron. The film arrives in theaters June 25.
Source: YouTube