Dany Garcia, the ex-wife of WWE superstar turned actor Dwayne The Rock Johnson, is also the woman behind his multi-million-dollar enterprise. Before transitioning to Hollywood to manage Rock’s career, Garcia worked in finance and was the associate vice president at the prestigious Merrill Lynch.
Garcia has proven her versatility by making, even more, success in the entertainment world. Under her management, The Rock’s net worth has enjoyed an exponential increase. In 2016, he was the highest-paid actor in the world with earnings of over $64 million.
Garcia is the CEO of Garcia Companies, a media management firm, and co-CEO of Seven Bucks Productions. Amazingly, she is also a professional bodybuilder. Here is everything you need to know about Dany Garcia.
Dany Garcia Wiki/Bio/Age
Dany Garcia was born on 29 November 1968, in New Jersey to Cuban immigrants who struggled to make ends meet. Garcia has revealed that her mom entered the US at 16 and her dad at 14. As a child growing under difficult circumstances, Garcia vowed to one day become a millionaire so she could adequately take care of her parents. Almost right away, Garcia, at the age of 12, began working towards her dream. She ran a barn in New Jersey and in high school, where she was an active athlete, she still made out time to sell business suits.
After graduating from high school, Garcia was accepted at the University of Miami, Florida where she would meet fellow undergrad Dwayne Johnson who was on a football scholarship. In college, Garcia continued as an athlete and kept working to keep her millionaire dreams alive.
She graduated in 1992 with international marketing and finance. Immediately, she began working in the financial sector and rose up the ranks to VP at Merrill Lynch, as well as an executive at Pierce, Fenner & Smith. She also founded her own wealth management firm.
All the while, she also took out time to advise Johnson who had launched a career in professional wrestling. She spoke with the WWE leadership and execs and helped seal deals that would help turn The Rock into one of the indelible faces of the WWE franchise.
After leaving Merrill Lynch to become The Rock’s full-time manager, Garcia set up Garcia Companies and Seven Bucks Productions.
Her production company co-owned with Johnson, Seven Bucks Productions formed in 2012 has already produced a number of films worth mentioning, they include; Baywatch (which was heavily criticized by critics but was a box office success), Jumanji, and HBO TV series Ballers. The company has over 50 projects including a reboot of the cult film “Big Trouble in Little China” and a spin-off of The Rock’s character in The Fast and The Furious film franchise.
In addition to film and television, Seven Bucks has also expanded her platform to include lifestyle and digital with the launch of a YouTube Channel ran by The Rock.
In April 2016, Dany brought another big name under her media management umbrella, Man of Steel and Batman v Superman star Henry Cavill.
Bodybuilding
Garcia’s bio couldn’t be complete without mentioning that she is perhaps the only female American business executive who is also a professional bodybuilder. She began pursuing the passion which nursed as a teenager, in 2011 at the age of 43, after much encouragement from her present bodybuilder husband, Dave Rienzi whom she married in 2014.
At her first national competition, she came 7th out of 42 women. In 2014, she earned her pro card with the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB), an achievement that she said left her tough teenage daughter in tears of joy.
Despite her love for bodybuilding, Garcia has vowed that she would not ignore her other interests, as a result, she juggles competitions with business meetings in Hollywood and so far, she’s doing really well.
Net Worth
Dwayne Johnson’s 8-figure annual paychecks are proof of just how successful, Garcia has become. Her dream of becoming a millionaire has indeed come true thanks to her unwavering determination and hard work. “My family’s happy and now well taken care of,” she told Marie Claire about her once-poverty-stricken family. Dany Garcia is sitting pretty with an estimated net worth of $70 Million, a figure that is sure to rise, should she keep up at this pace.
Dany Garcia Relationship With Dwayne Johnson
The divorce between Garcia and Johnson has been labeled as one of Hollywood’s most amicable divorces. The pair who met in college got married in 1997, about 5 years after Garcia had left college.
In 2001, they welcomed their first which would also become their only child together, a daughter named Simone Alexandra Johnson who aspires to one day become a WWE Diva if daddy accepts.
But if he doesn’t, she could be churning out scripts for her movie producer mum and actor dad to work with as she is per her mom “very gifted in her writing skills.”
The question that interviewers can’t seem to skip when questioning Garcia is how she has managed to stay successful as Johnson’s manager despite being previously married to him. Garcia has given many replies in the past, often noting that the divorce was a very amicable one.
Telling Marie Claire in 2017 how she has managed to work with Johnson as his ex-wife, the former finance executive said;
“Some people go through separation and there’s no conversation, and it’s a dark time, and one person goes off, but that was never us. We went on this journey together. We were going to change the manner of the relationship together. We spoke every day, and multiple times a day—not only on business but on what was happening personally. We spent over a year looking at the things that didn’t work in our marriage, the reasons why, making sure those elements had been cleared and taken care of, and that we had a real understanding of respect. We gave ourselves room to know that there may be emotional freak-outs as new people come into our lives. We were like, ‘Okay, we’re human, so we’re going to work through that.’ But if you have this agreement that no one is going to leave the table, suddenly you can tackle everything.”
Amazingly, Garcia’s current bodybuilder husband Dave Rienzi is The Rock’s personal trainer. It doesn’t get any better than that in a Hollywood divorce.
