In the matter of just a few years, Glen Powell has become one of the biggest new movie stars of our time. From his role in Top Gun: Maverick to leading other hits like Anyone But You, Twisters and the upcoming The Running Man, the 37-year-old has really been showing that he can do it all. Now that he has, will he be pumping the brakes at all?
Absolutely not. When CinemaBlend’s Jeff McCobb asked the actor, here’s what he told us:
No, I’m not [tired]. I’m honestly having the time of my life. I don’t need a break. You know what’s fun is that… I mean, I’ve been wanting to do this job for, like, literally my entire life. So, it’s like, I don’t know why I would press the brake when I feel like I’m just starting to get going. But, I’m having fun.
Glen Powell confidently told us he’s very much ready to stay on a roll with even more big projects while on the heels of The Running Man hitting theaters next week. The latest of 2025 movie releases is currently expected to make waves at the box office with a potentially strong opening weekend (per Box Office Pro) after already receiving positive first reactions, not only from critics, but big names. Stephen King called it “Die Hard for our time” and Arnold Schwarzenegger told Powell it is “incredible.”
Powell is no overnight success; he has been an actor for the past 20 years, getting his first movie credit in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over when he was a teenager. He’s spent a lot of his career without the kind of opportunities that he has now, once feeling very happy with getting paid “bare minimum” to be in The Expendables 3 a decade prior. As he shared with CinemaBlend in our interview, he’s definitely taking in this moment now that it’s here. In his words:
I was talking to some of my buddies. We saw Mission: Impossible II, the John Woo version. And I bought a book on special effects, and I set up all these, like, firecrackers underneath the sand and we had this gunfight, and I did this kick in the sand where the gun flies up, and I shoot. Remember that thing? We have a beat like that in The Running Man… I got to show the movie to a bunch of my buddies, and they were like ‘Dude, this is like literally what we were doing when we were ten, eleven years old. Doing stunt fights in the backyard and stuff.
It sounds like Glen Powell is truly a fan of movies at his core, and used to spend his play time with his friends pretending they were in movies like The Running Man. As he recalled, when Mission: Impossible II came out when he was eleven years old, he bought a special effects book and tried to recreate one of Tom Cruise’s action moments with his friends. 25 years later, he’s made his own sort of Mission: Impossible scene like that, and Tom Cruise has already come to support the movie at a recent screening.
Powell’s “can do” attitude and true passion for movies is certainly part of the kind of star power that has earned him a spot among Hollywood’s biggest new names. After the actor had a big summer in 2024 with Twisters and Hit Man, he’s back at it, not only with The Running Man, but also the recent Hulu show Chad Powers. You can see him in The Running Man in theaters on Friday, November 14.