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4 hours ago
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There’s that famous line in the first episode of The Sopranos, where Tony laments his place in the timeline. “Lately I’m getting the feeling,” he confides, “that I came in at the end. The best is over.” I know Tony was talking about the mindful joy of building an incredibly violent organised crime enterprise from the ground up – but lately I’ve been thinking about his words every time I watch Glen Powell giving it 200% as a movie star. Glen Powell is Hollywood’s hottest mid-level actor; but because of the harsh realities of modern movie stardom, a lot of people still don’t know who he is. You get the feeling he’s coming in at the end of something.
Yet barely a week goes by where I don’t hear of an uncast starring role – the bodyguard in the Bodyguard remake, the cybercriminal in the Matrix remake, the hot soldier in the Starship Troopers remake – and not think: tell you what, Glen Powell could do that for you. Glen Powell could deliver that. He’s not going to turn up late to set, he’s going to work harder than anyone else, he’s going to promote the arse out of it – and if all that can open a wormhole back to the era when literally everyone knew who movie stars were, then Glen Powell is sure as hell going to take the opportunity. He is, quite simply, a one-man cargo cult for Hollywood’s vanished primacy.
I’m kidding, of course. Because the good news, I discover as I sit with him, is that you can kid around with Glen Powell: actor, writer, proud Texan. And also: condiment tycoon, at a price point America can afford (more on that later, rest assured).
“Truly, I don’t know how anyone takes themselves seriously in this job,” he laughs. And yet, so many do, Glen. “No, but I really don’t. It’s so funny. On every movie I literally sit there thinking: there is no way you can be a self-serious person and do this job well, because it’s so ridiculous.” It’s hard to disagree, thinking back to this morning’s photoshoot, where I watched Glen wearing an extremely expensive top-to-toe purple outfit while wiping the floor after a little accident by his internet-famous dog, Brisket. A beguiling fluffball, Brisket has attended a lot of premieres, and takes second billing to Glen – for now. You have to remember this is a dog-eat-dog business.
In the flesh, Glen is chirpily handsome and category five amiable – a sort of Mickey Mouse Club version of James Dean. He’s about to open in Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man, based on the Stephen King novel – another of those dystopian fictions that sees society as a death game that are (for whatever reason!) having a long cultural moment. “I’ve watched everything Edgar has ever done,” Glen enthuses – and it’s fun thinking of him enjoying the lost British males of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, and then offering up his own all-American hunkdom to the Wright vision.
So we’re in a big moment for Glen Powell – yet, simultaneously, he’s fully aware that being a major movie star is a different game from what it was last time this particular action title was on cinema marquees. (The year: 1987. The star: Mr Arnold Schwarzenegger.) “Yeah,” he smiles. “It’ll never be what it used to be.”
We’re being brought takeaway pasta at a picnic table on the Paramount Pictures lot – perhaps fittingly, the last bit of Hollywood still located in actual Hollywood – and I’ve tactically ordered ravioli because it’s the least messy, and I’m worried about having 2ft of spaghetti trailing out of my mouth while I’m asking Glen Powell about the fracturing of shared contemporary culture. Glen’s gone for something involving significant amounts of one of those spiky lettuces that Americans have fancy names for. Could be dangerous.
Anyway: the lost past. Glen likes to tell a story about the education he received around a decade ago on The Expendables 3. (Important Glen Powell fact: he loves nothing more than an education, and is fully committed to meeting his heroes and learning everything about the business from them.) The Expendables is the franchise where Sylvester Stallone keeps getting a bunch of action stars of the 1980s and 90s together for one last job. On Glen’s iteration of the series, he was in the gang with Stallone, Harrison Ford, Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes, Mel Gibson, Dolph Lundgren and Antonio Banderas. The full action retirement community. “All those guys were really so great,” he remembers. “They were legends. And they were like: man, you’re doing this at the wrong time …”
Does he wish he were born in that earlier time (a bit like that stripe of modern British politician who secretly imagines they’d have been just the man for the bygone glories of the 20th or even 19th centuries)? “Look, every era of Hollywood has the sky-is-falling mentality. It was always better back then. But my favourite movies are, like, 90s, early 2000s. That’s what I grew up watching, and what made me come out here [to LA].”
He’s certainly remade a few of them, or at least starred in modern reboots of them. His serious breakout was in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick as Hangman, the spiritual heir to Val Kilmer’s swaggering Iceman in the original. Then there was Twisters, a sequel to the mid-90s Twister, and now The Running Man, while one of the many projects in the pipeline is a Ron Howard movie about firefighters, which it’s hard not to feel is at least in the Backdraft extended universe. Surely one can teleport our entire culture back to the golden age of action stardom?
But there’s also the other side to his career – movies such as the 2023 neo-noir Hit Man, co-written with Richard Linklater, which made some film snoots suddenly feel differently about him. And the small matter of his saving romcoms – twice – with Set It Up (2018, huge for Netflix), and 2023’s Anyone But You, where he starred opposite bombshell turned culture-wars lightning rod Sydney Sweeney, and served up a surprise box-office hit. That one came with a side performance of fauxmance, as the pair allowed the media to think they were maybe dating to promote the film (they weren’t). Meanwhile, he’s co-written Chad Powers, a new TV sports comedy for Hulu – and just wrapped on Ghostwriter, a fantasy film for JJ Abrams. It’s quite the mix.
“If you meet my family,” he explains, “you’ll probably see why.” (Vital Glen Powell fact: Glen Powell is utterly devoted to his parents, Glen Sr, an executive coach, and Cyndy, a homemaker and frequent cameo in his movies. Ditto the two sisters he falls in the middle of – Leslie is a musician, and Lauren has just given birth to her second set of twins). “This would be a family where you go see a Yankees game and a Broadway show in one day. I loved Gene Kelly, and I love Bruce Willis.” But they were homebodies, too. “Oh yeah. You go to the ranch in Texas, and the kitchen – that’s where all life happened.”
And you love romcoms. “Well, I grew up with sisters, and so many female cousins – the women in the Powell family really run the roost. I mean, my dad took my mom’s last name.” Well, fancy that. “Right? But actually there’s something about romcoms. A lot of actors tell me their favourite movies and I’m, like, that’s dark. I always like movies that are rewatchable, that fill you up.” Comforting things? “Yeah, comforting things. I sort of like escapist things, where you’re not pulling people’s energy, you’re giving them energy. And that’s what romcoms are to me.” He can quote Legally Blonde in its entirety. In fact, because of the meeting-his-heroes thing, Glen made it his business to connect with Karen McCullah, the great romcom writer who gave us Legally Blonde. And then he knew just who he had to introduce her to. “When my family met Karen McCullah, it was like they were meeting the Beatles.”
Even so, movie romance feels endangered. There was a study saying intimacy on screen had decreased 40% since the millennium. Glen, I’m worried hot people aren’t getting it on in the movies as much as they used to. “Is that right? Why do you think that is?” I dunno. Changing tastes in a disinherited generation? I tell him I noted the last scene of Twisters seemed to be him asking for Daisy Edgar-Jones’s informed consent to even phone her. Although, I read they did film a kiss but the director didn’t use it. “I blame myself,” Glen cackles. Just botched the kiss? “I tried! I did my best!”
You see, he looks like this alpha, macho, watch-loving guy – but he’s always out there subverting it. Maybe that’s the Glen Powell special sauce (not the actual sauce; we’ll get to the sauce). “I mean … it’s not a conscious thing. You know, I grew up with big dogs. And when I was going to adopt a dog, I went to look at big dogs. But then I liked Brisket. A little fluffy, cute, part-chihuahua was not in the plan – but we found each other.” I realise Glen reminds me a lot of the old Athena poster of the hot, shirtless guy holding the baby. If you’re my age or over, you’ll remember it. If you’re younger, all I need to tell you is that this was the biggest-selling poster of the 1980s and made the photographer so much money that he bought a plane.
Having said that, Glen’s vibe wasn’t ringing the tills for a long while back there. He dropped out of his University of Texas degree in Spanish and early American history. (Of course – of course – he is now completing this degree aged 37, remotely, while shooting films. Glen Powell sees things through. Also, it would make his mother really happy.) He moved to LA with the kind of charmed introduction that must have felt like he was 10 minutes from stardom: Denzel Washington, who’d cast a teenage Powell in The Great Debaters, hooked him up with his agent, Ed Limato. At which point … Glen settled into a long, long period of rejection and disappointment. I heard he flunked auditions for Han Solo and Captain America? He pauses to dentally extract a particularly lengthy piece of lettuce. “Now, you’re talking about the big ones. But I also failed a lot of auditions for really bad jobs. Like, some bad roles.” So you had range? “Oh yeah, I had real range in my failure. I didn’t get cast in some really bad movies, too.”
Things took a serious downward turn when Limato died in 2010. Glen still remembers exactly where he was when he got the call that the agency was dropping him. “I knew that would be the beginning of a really tough road. You had a guy who was the top of the food chain, and he was really looking out for me. But when he died, and I got let go, I knew I was in for a scrappy little run.” On the plus side, those agents will be massively kicking themselves now? “Oh, I talk to some of them – they’re still friends of mine. But I do give them shit about it,” he confirms with a twinkle. “You have to.” But maybe not becoming famous in your 20s is good? “Oh man, I think it’s really good. Honestly.” We then have to pause for the extraction of a piece of lettuce so big it needs its own trailer.
One thing Limato managed to do for Powell before he died was get him a job reading scripts for the late producer and writer Lynda Obst, responsible for movies from Sleepless in Seattle to Interstellar. He adored it. “It was a really cool thing. She was one of those really special producers. You know, Texans have this really weird thing – ”
Sorry, wait – you’re from Texas?
“Ha! I haven’t told anyone … Break the story that I’m Texan! But, listen, Texans really do take care of other Texans.” (Even honorary ones do – Obst was born in New York, but had made a home in Texas.) “She was a Longhorn! So I got to go and sit on the Sony lot and read scripts for her. I was the fastest reader by far. I did three scripts a day.”
Flash forward several years to Tom Cruise offering him a role in Top Gun: Maverick, and Glen is (a) broke, but (b) really knows what he needs from a script. And somewhat bizarrely, given (a), he almost didn’t take the part of Hangman, summoning the confidence to push back against the original script until Cruise reconfigured his character’s place within in it. “But doing it that way was the greatest decision I ever made. It could have been me sitting on the sidelines, kicking my heels, thinking: ‘Man, I burned a few years.’ But it was the best film school. The fact that Tom is such a close friend now – when I got Running Man, he was literally my first call. I said: ‘Dude, you’ve been doing this for decades.’ He has picked up every trick in the book. And he’s so generous – I thought I was going to talk to him for 10 minutes. He stayed on the phone for two hours plus.”
Give us a peek at the Tom Cruise trick-book, then. “He’s like: ‘Tell me some of the stunts you’re doing.’ I said: ‘OK, I’m jumping off exploding bridges, falling off roofs.’ He said: ‘Are you running at night?’ Yes. ‘OK, that means you’ll probably wrap at five in the morning. Don’t do any sprinting shots at five in the morning. Your body’s going to be out of whack and you’ll get hurt. They’re always going to do a wetdown at night.’” (A wetdown is when the crew hose down the ground both because the reflections look cooler in the dark, but also because it hides tyre skids or footprints or whatever for continuity.) “So Tom says: ‘That’s fine if you’re running straight. If you’re taking a corner, no.’”
This is when meeting your heroes saves you a torn knee ligament. What else? “He goes: ‘If you’re hanging 11 storeys up, make sure people see how high you are. Make sure the shot reflects depth and dimension. You are selling the fact that you are doing these things.’”
Something a lot people say, in these days of endless CGI, is that there’s a kind of empty feeling when you know it was all just done on green screen. It doesn’t really connect. Is this why Tom Cruise – and now you – want to do as many as possible of your own stunts? “Right. It really sells it because if the audience know that you are in peril, there is an inherent investment. I believe you have to give the audience their value in the ticket. If people are actively going to the theatre, getting a babysitter, maybe doing dinner, you’ve got to justify that ticket price. And that’s what Tom always talks about – you have to have skin on the line. If they’re showing up for you, you’ve got to show up for them.”
But bingo cards at the ready, because the next movie Glen will shoot will be something he co-wrote with Judd Apatow in which he shows up as … a country singer. “I’ve always been so nervous to sing,” he admits. “I was obsessed with Elvis as a kid. And my little sister used to sell girl scout cookies, and there was a honeysuckle bush next to our house. And for everyone that bought one of her cookies, I gave them an Elvis song. But I couldn’t sing in front of them, so I hid behind the honeysuckle bush and sang.” Oh Glen. I think I just OD’d on Americana. Will Judd Apatow be providing you with a honeysuckle bush? “No! I have to do it in front of everyone.”
It seems as good a time as any to say that I wonder if it’s hard being all-American in such a divided America? “Yeah,” he exhales. “I’m not a political person. I like things that bring people together.” Sure. But it feels like you’re the type of actor who wants to be for everyone, and that’s getting so much harder now there are fewer parts of culture enjoyed by both sides, as it were. Take something like late-night television, which back in the glory days of David Letterman was TV watched by everybody, of all political leanings, but is now perceived to be siloed for only one side. (And that’s what remains of late-night. Soon after this interview, Jimmy Kimmel was temporarily yanked off air.) Maybe action movies are one of the last bastions of truly shared American culture?
“That’s a good point. There’s a universal language of action, which is also why those movies translate so well internationally. Running Man is about something universal – what you would be willing to do for the people you love? But also how people can feel powerless in the face of a world that feels more and more unequal, more unfair. So, you’re not going to see me talk politics. But movies – that’s how I express myself. Movies are a conversation; politics always felt to me like two people trying to prove a point.”
Unfortunately and undoubtedly, though, the erosion of shared mainstream culture makes that conversation smaller than it was. I say to Glen that it’s as if there are fewer and fewer people who everyone is permitted to like, no matter what “side” they’re on. The Rock’s one, and maybe Travis Kelce. He agrees. Of all the people coming up to big-time stardom in recent years, I would have picked him and Sydney Sweeney as having that kind of broad appeal. Except now, Sweeney’s been mired in a raging culture war, after some people decided a denim advert in which she participated was … I can’t quite believe I’m typing this, but it is, after all, 2025 … eugenicist. Something to do with “good jeans” and “good genes”, apparently – but, please, don’t dig further. Every second spent on it would make you stupider.
Put politely, I tell Glen, I thought this was bullshit. And yet, I don’t think people in the business came out to defend her. Is it because it’s just a relief that the firestorm isn’t happening to them at that moment? Or is it a form of cowardice? A pause. Not lettuce-related. “I think people weighed in on it,” he says of the Sweeney firestorm. I don’t, I say. I think she was left to twist in the wind. “But I think people are aware that it’s bullshit.” Yet they didn’t say that publicly. “Look, in an era in which businesses are evolving and are seeing their mortality in front of them, sometimes they are desperate to make anything run. Whether it’s true or not, whether it hurts anyone – there is no accountability any more.”
I think he’s talking about the news media and how it operates in a digital age – because if you think Hollywood is past its heyday, then it’s got nothing on journalism. Back in the day, stars gave reflective, candid interviews, and those discussions sat relatively isolated in magazines and colour supplements or on evanescent episodes of celebrated talkshows. But these days, people want a news line or six out of an interview, and they want to put it in the headline, even though they know it’s going to get scraped and clipped from here to kingdom come by every clickbait news website out there, within moments of it dropping online.
And this is why celebrities don’t want to say anything eye-catching in interviews any more. This is why we can’t have reflective things. Any star, any author, any musician – anyone in the entertainment business these days who sits down to an interview has one overwhelming goal: to not make news. I tell Glen I can see why people would never really want to offer an opinion, because then you’ve got three days of “Glen Powell Wades Into Sydney Sweeney Discourse” headlines, and it’s a nightmare and a distraction and it gets in the way of the work you want to do. Is that what it feels like? Another pause.
“The sad part is you do have to separate yourself,” he sighs. “You can’t get caught up in it – it has nothing to do with you, it has to do with ad dollars. And, you know, there is no course-correcting. If something’s false, you’re not actually setting the record straight, you’re just feeding the beast. That’s why I don’t say shit – just let it come, and let it go. Not feeding the beast and not trying to fight anything. I’ve realised the smart people in Hollywood don’t try to fight anything that has nothing to do with them.”
And yet, when all eyes were on Jimmy Kimmel’s return after that controversial suspension, who should turn up as his very first guest? Why, I do believe it was Mr Glen Powell, bringing a smile and a care package of warm anecdotes, and declaring straight out of the gate that he was “honoured to be here”. And who should be pictured shortly thereafter at Sydney Sweeney’s space-themed birthday, wearing a hilariously cheap Nasa astronaut costume that I refuse to believe he didn’t buy on Amazon? Well, you get the point.
Still, he must fear it’ll be his turn to be in the woodchipper for something one of these days? “Oh, it’s inevitable. It’s not an if, it’s when. It’s been an adjustment. I try to be honest, work really hard, and treat people well – that’s how I try to move through my life. Inevitably, you’re going to catch some strays. But that’s the nature of the job and I’ve watched it happen to other people.”
Tangentially, it strikes me that “the job” has morphed beyond anything it was in the past. Remember when Mark Wahlberg’s routine dropped online, and it involved him getting up at 2.30am for the first of several workouts, as well having to incorporate meetings, prayer time, and the conflicting demands of family interaction and cryo-chamber recovery? Glen laughs. In the modern style, even he is capable of giving a detailed explanation of the type of physique required for Ben Richards, his character in The Running Man. “He works in a factory, he’s a guy whose body is like a tool. So I wanted him to be strong and durable – blue-collar strong, but not like he goes to a gym.” Needless to say, this requires a significant amount of time in the gym.
It must be weird – you get into this job because you like the feeling of acting, and the bit where you’re doing that specific thing ends up being a small fraction of your time, around all the meetings and photoshoots and endless workouts and whatnot. Perhaps this is why, for all his easy charm, Glen has flipped to finding movie sets the sane places of the world. “Do you know what’s hit me in the last little bit? I love acting. I love the process of bringing a team of people together and we all come together and make something really cool. I’m not exhausted by that – it’s fun. But the exhausting part, the part that throws me, is when I’m in the real world right now. On a movie set, you have your head down, you’re collaborating with people, it feels very ordinary. But the part that I’m getting used is this other thing.” Fame? “Yeah. I’m still figuring it out.”
He has, at least, figured out how to shift a load of ketchup. As mentioned, the modern actor has to be very diversified. So, back in April, Powell launched Smash Kitchen, a range of organic ketchups and mustards and mayonnaises, ideal for pairing with the great Texas cuisine of barbecue. It has already sold more than a million units in its first three months and is expanding at pace. As for where it’s sold? Walmart, obviously. Cheapest sauce in the range is under two dollars, nothing costs more than five. I mean, it’s too on the nose, and yet unavoidable – Glen Powell wants to be mass market, both as a movie star, and as a sauce mogul. “Sauce mogul! Sauce mogul! I have not heard that before …”
Maybe the best thing success has brought him, apart from unlimited condiments, was the right to move back to Texas, and escape from LA. “When this town feels like Hollywood is happening here, there’s nothing better. And when it’s not, then … it’s a harder place to live. But I always wanted to go back to Texas. That’s where my family is, that’s where my friends are. I have friends here, but I can bring them back to Texas.” As he points out, it helps that Hollywood “decentralised overnight” in the pandemic, because of Zoom, self-taping, a general cultural shift. “It’s no longer a brick-and-mortar business.” It’s no longer a lot of things, but it’s great that Glen has conquered it sufficiently to be allowed to WFT (Work From Texas).
Which about wraps us up, bar my minor panic that the interview has not, in fact, recorded. The problem, I tell him as I fiddle doubtfully with the recording device, is that I don’t do many interviews. In fact, I honestly don’t think I’ve done one for more than a decade. “That’s a long time! Who was it?” I think it was a politician called Nigel Farage. “Nigel Farage?” says Glen. “I haven’t heard of him.” Well, short answer, it’s just possible he’s going to be prime minister of the United Kingdom one of these days. So what this logically means, Glen Powell, is that in around 13 years you’re going to have to drop what you’re doing … “and be prime minister! Ha!”
Listen, in a darkening world, we can only live in hope.
