From 'Anyone But You' to 'Twisters' to writing and starring in 'Hit Man', Powell calls me from London to share what he's learned about winning in Hollywood
SCHOOL SPIRIT “I’m getting to work with these great filmmakers, and great filmmakers surround themselves with great department heads,” says Glen Powell of how he tries to absorb knowledge on set. “It’s just film school for me.” (Presley Ann/Getty Images for Netflix)
It was a funny thing to get to ask this very literal question to Powell on this week’s Prestige Junkie podcast, calling in from his London kitchen on a day off from the set of Edgar Wright’s upcoming remake of The Running Man. Powell got a head start on 2024, opening the rom-com Anyone But You over the holidays last year, and then never slowed down, headlining the summer blockbuster Twisters as well as the clever, incredibly funny comedy Hit Man, which he also co-wrote with director Richard Linklater.
“It’s been a really surreal one,” Powell admits, with the kind of Texan understatement that has helped mint him as a bona fide movie star. ”You just never know how far this ride’s gonna take you, but it’s taking me a lot further than I thought. It’s pretty cool.”
Powell, 36, is quick to correct anyone who might call him an overnight success. His first screen role was in a Linklater film, a tiny part in 2006’s Fast Food Nation, but he followed that with nearly a decade of toiling in obscurity, taking tiny roles in such films as The Dark Knight Rises and TheExpendables 3 and trying to learn from major stars as he watched them work. Breaking out as a star in his thirties means he comes with a healthy sense of what he wants out of this business — and what the business might want out of him.
“This job is sort of split into two parts: You have to outwork everyone and be tenacious, and yet you also have to let go and realize this is a marathon, not a sprint,” Powell says. “If you really want to outlast in this business, you treat people well, you work hard, but you also know that there’s going to be wins and losses. It’s a large sine wave. The quicker the ascent, the quicker the descent. You have to kind of trust in the sort of ebbs and flows of it all.”
CAREER BOOM Powell, right, opposite Hit Man co-star Adria Arjona and director and co-screenwriter Richard Linklater. (Brian Roedel/Netflix)
Hit Man is based on a 2001 Texas Monthly article about a real man who posed as a hit man on behalf of the police. Linklater and Powell infused the story with humor and a romance between Powell’s character and a woman (Adria Arjona) who tries to hire him to kill her husband. They made the movie independently before it was bought by Netflix following its fall 2023 festival premiere, but getting to that point wasn’t all that easy. When potential investors heard their pitch, Powell says, “They saw potential and then they wanted to turn it into something else.”
Powell and Linklater looked at each other, wondered if they were the crazy ones for thinking they had something good, and decided to go with their gut — another thing Powell has learned to rely on after nearly 20 years in the business — and make the film they wanted to make. “That’s one thing that I’m taking with me in terms of my career,” Powell says about the Hit Man experience. “It’s just, do I want to see this movie? And if I want to see this movie, if I get jazzed about it, there’s obviously an audience for it somewhere.”
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