John Cena believes wrestling and acting success are "completely different".

The 44-year-old grappler-turned-actor can understand why people think it would be a smooth transition between professions but he's had to "work as hard as [he] can" in order to make it big in Hollywood.

He said: "Well, the term Hollywood has such a mystique and lustre around it. If you’re skilled at doing one thing, and then you transition into doing another — really, it sounds the same, but it’s a completely different thing.

"If you have any chance of success, you have to really, really prepare as much as you can. And if you feel you don’t have a head start, you’ve just got to put rubber to the road and work your a**off. So that’s kind of where I’m at, dipping my toes back into the screen side of entertainment rather than live events.

"And I realise I’ve got my work to do, and I’m just trying to work as hard as I can to catch up to everybody else."

When he was promoting 'The Suicide Squad', John stunned those working on the movie by asking to wear the "uniform" of his character Peacemaker, but it was a trick he'd learned from his years in the WWE in order to be memorable.

He explained to Britain's GQ magazine: "You know, I learned very early on in my WWE career that the greatest characters with the most long-term success — we just dropped a show on Peacock called 'Evil', which profiles eight of the top WWE quote-unquote 'heels' — and a constant thread in all of that is dedication to character.

"And the reason, like, there’s the perception of John Cena, 'Oh, he never changes' — yeah, I don’t. Because it’s the concept of uniformity. And you have to feel like you know me. In the WWE, you couldn’t catch me at an appearance without jean shorts, sneakers, a t-shirt, ballcap, and a bunch of wristbands. I was everywhere in them. And people come to know that’s who you are.

"I was so dedicated to it that meme culture ran with it, in multiple different varieties: the invisible John Cena meme, the unexpected John Cena meme. And a lot of that is based on being so familiar with the look.

"So in 'The Suicide Squad', you’ve got 20 to 25 characters, and I wanted to make mine familiar.

"So I asked to do all the press in uniform, and they couldn’t believe that.

"But I wanted the audience to know who Peacemaker was before they saw Peacemaker. By no means am I trying to score runway points, I don’t have any style aside from wearing a suit and tie, so you might as well wear the costume that people are going to see on screen and have some fun with it."