During the lead-up to the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, NBC asked Ilia Malinin to appear in a cross-promotional commercial re-creating a scene from the Universal movie How To Train Your Dragon. For the 21-year-old figure skating phenom, who carries the movie’s branded keychain with him everywhere and calls his plushie of one of its characters his “spirit animal,” it was a no-brainer.

But over the course of the day, what excited him more was getting a glimpse behind the scenes of a television production for the first time. His marketing agent, Sheryl Shade, remembers Malinin turning to her at one point with wide eyes. “I want to do this,” he said.

It’s a phrase Shade has heard often since she started working with Malinin a year and a half ago, when the then-19-year-old, already considered the future face of skating, was first figuring out his ambitions outside of the rink. The answer, Shade soon found out, was everything—television, fashion, videogames, skateboarding and seemingly whatever else he had last tried.

“One of my goals is definitely, and this is skating related, but it’s to become a worldwide global celebrity,” Malinin, who is expected to first take the ice in Milan on Saturday in the team event, tells Forbes. “Kind of how The Rock was known for wrestling, and then he became an actor and has gone on to all these different opportunities, so my idea is to be similar, on that level.”

Of course, Malinin, who has collected an estimated $700,000 over the past 12 months, has a long way to go if he wants to emulate Dwayne Johnson, who topped last year’s Forbes ranking of the world’s highest-paid actors with $88 million. But the young American is already the highest-paid figure skater at these Olympics, according to Forbes estimates, and most experts believe he is only scratching the surface........

© Forbes