Vince McMahon

McMahon built the company before he built the character. With his later-estranged wife Linda he co-founded the modern WWE and turned it into the largest professional wrestling promotion in the world, then tried the same trick in neighbouring arenas with the World Bodybuilding Federation and the XFL football league, neither of which stuck the way wrestling did.

His screen credits split cleanly along that business line. On one side he is listed as creator on most of the shows that make up a modern WWE television week: WWE Friday Night SmackDown, WWE NXT, WWE ECW, WWE Main Event, WWE Tough Enough, the whole machine. On the other he is a director of record on the big pay-per-view broadcasts going back to WrestleMania II and WrestleMania III in the mid 1980s, plus a commentator on the older studio shows.

Then there is Mr. McMahon, the on-camera role, which is the reason a promoter has an acting filmography at all. He is billed as Mr. McMahon rather than as himself at WWE WrestleMania X-Seven and WWE WrestleMania 22, and the character travelled far enough that cartoons hired it: he voices Mr. McMagma in a Flintstones crossover and himself in a Scooby-Doo one. Very few businessmen have a corporate alter ego with its own animated licensing.

He is a former promoter now, and the recent credits reflect a subject rather than an owner: an interviewee on Dark Side of the Ring, and the sole focus of the 2024 documentary series Mr. McMahon.