Have you ever wondered why Dwayne Johnson continues to be one of Hollywood’s most in demand actors?

Sure, it’s easy to look at the success he’s enjoying at the moment and forget about the journey to get there but for Dwayne Johnson the journey is what makes his story so compelling and relatable.

What does any of this have to do with your own acting career?

If you’ve been around Boost My Star for any length of time, you know that I’m a big proponent of studying the careers of successful actors and mapping out the moves they made that helped take their careers to the next level.

Dwayne Johnson is a great one to study because of the roller coaster that his career has been.

His acting career was basically dead on arrival, much in the same way his wrestling career began. It too almost fizzled out before ever really getting off the ground.

Now he has built a powerful brand that transcends the screen, which in turn makes audiences want to see more of him.

See, it’s easy to look at someone who’s at the top of the industry and imagine that they were always there.

However, if you want to build your career as a professional actor you have to be able to identify the next best step to take.

A lot of that is also knowing which steps not to take.

Here's where to start...

Start by looking at a successful actor’s career. Don’t just pay attention to their accomplishments.

Dig deeper and look at the things they’ve done that made the biggest difference in their career, whether it was a positive difference or a...not so positive difference.

If you’re a fan, you probably already have at least some idea of when they were all of a sudden everywhere and when they seemed to disappear into thin air.

Let’s take Dwayne Johnson for example. If you were mapping out his career, you wouldn’t just want to look at his credits.

You would also look into the box office numbers or ratings of the projects he was involved in, his prominence in those projects, and how well his performance was received by critics and audiences.

When you go this many layers deep, you get a much better idea of what the project did for the actor’s career.

For Dwayne Johnson, you would find a mix of really high profile blockbusters, combined with projects that only met expectations, and you would even find a few misses.

So what does that tell you about the big picture strategy behind how he’s building his acting career?

There will be some missteps along the way. That’s kind of an unavoidable part of being an actor and it’s why this career mapping exercise is so important.

Obviously you won’t be able to replicate their exact moves, but that’s not really what you’re after. You want to look at the overall strategy and look at what they do.

What do they do after they have a successful project?

What do they do after they have a project that didn’t meet its expectations? Do they follow it up with a more niche project, or do they go after something mainstream?

I bring up Dwayne Johnson because his career has moved through basically every stage.

Like I mentioned earlier, his acting career stalled when getting off the ground, but then after some very particular moves things turned around very quickly.

Particularly, he narrowed his focus to playing a particular type of character and then experimented with other types, after building a successful career.

While this is key to his success, not every actor’s career is the same as another.

Many actors have come from wrestling also, but none have even come close to building an acting career like Dwayne Johnson’s.

He didn’t want to be just another wrestler turned actor.

If you really look at his career closely, you will see that he built everything based on his industry reputation, because he wanted to show the industry that he was a professional. Check out one of the biggest factors of your industry reputation and how I can help you improve it here.

Like I said, no two careers are exactly alike and Dwayne Johnson is just one example.

Whoever you choose to career map, there should be some element of the kind of career you would like to build for yourself.

Don’t start out by career mapping an action star, if what you really want to do are romantic comedies. Those career paths will differ quite a bit, so stick with something that is more closely related to your own career aspirations.

If you’re not sure of which way you want to go with your career, talk about it with the people around you. It takes a team of people, pushing towards the same goals for you, to really build a successful acting career. Here’s how I can be a part of your team.

We’ll talk more about that another time...

For now, get started on what we talked about today. Pick an actor to career map. As you start navigating through the different twists and turns of their career, pay close attention to how and when they start showing up in the places where casting directors and industry decision makers are already looking for talent. If you are looking to take your career to the next level, here’s a quick and easy way to make yourself highly visible to the industry.

Let me know what you discover about the actors you career map.

Leave me a comment below or feel free to shoot me an email anytime. I’m always happy to help however I can, even if you just need someone to bounce ideas with, because I truly want to...

See you at the top,
Scott