Glen Powell

• 1. Introduction

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  Glen Powell spent the autumn of 2025 enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, taking Radio-Television-Film classes over Zoom. By then he was headlining studio films and a television series he had helped create. His degree is still unfinished, and he now plans to complete it in May 2027. That odd detail frames a career built in the wrong order, with the diploma last and the stardom in between. Three questions run through his story. How does a working actor with a long list of small television credits become a leading man? What turned a handful of films into a breakout? And why did he start building his own projects instead of waiting to be cast?

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• 2. Austin Beginnings

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  Glen Thomas Powell Jr. was born on the 21st of October 1988 in Austin, Texas. His father, Glen Powell Sr., worked as an executive coach, and his mother, Cyndy, was a homemaker. He grew up with two sisters.

  In 2007, Powell graduated from Westwood High School in Austin, where he played football and lacrosse. He then spent one year at the University of Texas, which he called "the greatest year of his entire life." He left without finishing his degree.

  The unfinished degree has become a running project. He first aimed to complete it in spring 2024, then in spring 2025, but his schedule kept pushing the date back. He has also returned to campus for screenings and promotional events, including appearances connected to Chad Powers.

  In 2024, Powell moved from Los Angeles back to his hometown. He describes himself as a superfan of the Texas Longhorns. Long before that move, though, a film role in 2007 had already pulled him toward Los Angeles.

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• 3. Small Parts, Long Odds

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  Antonio Banderas and Sylvester Stallone were the stars on set when Powell's acting career began, in the 2003 film Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over. His credit there is Long-Fingered Boy. Two years later, in 2005, he played a paperboy in The Wendell Baker Story.

  Powell told an interviewer in 2026 how he prepared. He and his mother stood in their cul-de-sac while he threw hundreds of rolled-up newspapers, over and over. He says discipline is the key to his happiness. If he has invested in a role properly, he can turn off his head and enjoy the ride.

  In 2007, just before his first year of college, he won a part in The Great Debaters. Denzel Washington directed that film and starred in it. Washington introduced him to an agent named Ed Limato, who urged him to move to Los Angeles.

  The move was rough. Powell stayed with a friend of the family and struggled to land parts. He failed auditions for Friday Night Lights, Cowboys & Aliens and The Longest Ride.

  Television kept him working. He appeared in Into the West, Jack & Bobby, CSI: Miami, NCIS, Without a Trace, Rizzoli & Isles and The Lying Game. He also took minor parts in Stuck in Love and The Dark Knight Rises.

  Powell auditioned several times for The Dark Knight Rises. He says it meant a great deal when Christopher Nolan took a chance on him, because "nothing was going on" in his life then. Larger film roles would begin to arrive around 2014, and the first came alongside two familiar faces.

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• 4. Linklater and the Ensemble Years

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  In The Expendables 3, released in 2014, Powell played a hacker among a crowd of action veterans. Stallone and Banderas were there again. Powell later said he used the shoot to ask Stallone how to succeed in Hollywood.

  He next took minor parts in the comedies Sex Ed and Ride Along 2. In the same stretch, he had a main role in the first season of Scream Queens. He returned in a recurring role for the second season.

  In March 2016, Powell co-starred as Finnegan in Everybody Wants Some!!. Richard Linklater directed it as a spiritual sequel to Dazed & Confused. It was filmed in Austin and released by Paramount.

  Linklater explained what he wanted in the part. In his words: "I needed someone with some charisma who was going to be smart, who was also believable as a college athlete." He added that Powell came across as a Beat type, and was even reading The Subterraneans. The film is often cited as one of the first to really showcase Powell.

  Later in 2016, Powell played the astronaut John Glenn in the biographical drama Hidden Figures. In 2017, he appeared in the Netflix film Sand Castle as Sergeant Dylan Chutsky. In 2018, he took a supporting role in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. That same year, a Netflix romantic comedy began to change how often his phone rang.

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• 5. Becoming Hangman

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  Zoey Deutch played opposite Powell in Set It Up, the 2018 Netflix romantic comedy. Powell told The Hollywood Reporter that contacts in the industry began calling more after its release. Jake Greenburg of The Guardian called it the first movie wise enough to let Powell "take up real space."

  Later in 2018, Powell joined the cast of Top Gun: Maverick. He had first auditioned for Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw, but Miles Teller got that role. The producers liked his audition and offered him Jake "Hangman" Seresin instead.

  Powell hesitated, because he thought the character was underdeveloped. Then Tom Cruise, the film's star, phoned him. Cruise offered him greater control over the character, and Powell accepted.

  The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the film several times. When it finally opened in May 2022, it became a breakout role for him. Cruise also paid for Powell to attend flight school, and Powell is now a licensed pilot.

  March 2022 brought Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, a second collaboration with Linklater in which Powell did voice work. In November 2022 came Devotion, in which he played the naval officer Tom Hudner and served as an executive producer. Reviews were positive, but the film was a box-office bomb. His next release would go the other way, and it would do so on a modest romantic-comedy budget.

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• 6. The Anyone but You Effect

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  Anyone but You, released in December 2023, grossed $220 million worldwide. It paired Powell with Sydney Sweeney, and it emerged as a sleeper hit. Around the release, rumors swirled about an off-screen romance between the two stars.

  The pair later admitted that the look of a real-life relationship was part of a marketing strategy. Powell told The New York Times: "That's people wanting what's on the screen off the screen and sometimes you just have to lean into it a bit." He described the press tour as designed to be "its own sense of entertainment."

  Critic Scott Mendelson read the film as a statement about stardom. He called it "a star vehicle harkening back to when thespians, not IP or marquee characters, were franchises." The result propelled Powell to stardom.

  Offers arrived quickly. He signed on for Chad Powers, The Running Man, How To Make a Killing, The Great Beyond and The Comeback King. He also turned down Jurassic World: Rebirth.

  His reasoning was blunt. He said he read the script and realized "my presence in this movie doesn't help it." For him, the choice is about where to make an audience happy and where to make himself happy.

  One of those new vehicles was already finished. He had co-written it, and it had premiered at a festival months earlier.

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• 7. Writer and Star

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  Hit Man premiered at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival. Powell co-wrote and produced it with director Richard Linklater. He played an undercover police contractor who poses as a hitman, a character credited as Gary Johnson.

  Netflix released the film in June 2024. Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times called it a "genuine star-clinching turn." Sophie Butcher of Empire wrote that he "announces himself as a movie star and a filmmaking force to be reckoned with." The performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy.

  The following month, Powell starred in Twisters, a standalone sequel to the 1996 film Twister. He played Tyler Owens, a YouTube storm chaser. IndieWire's David Ehrlich praised him for "churning pure charisma." The film was both a critical and a box-office success.

  In 2025, he co-created and produced the comedy series Chad Powers, and starred as Russ Holiday. The show follows Holiday's attempt at a football comeback under a fake identity. Stuart Heritage of The Guardian called the role one of the "most magnetic and magical performances in memory." Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter disliked the show but admired Powell. He noted that the actor stayed fully committed to two inconsistently written characters. The first season succeeded, and a second was ordered.

  November 2025 brought The Running Man, a remake of Stephen King's thriller novel, directed by Edgar Wright. Powell played Ben Richards. Reviews were mixed, and the film bombed at the box office.

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• 8. Barnstorm and What Comes Next

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  In January 2025, Powell announced a production company called Barnstorm. It has a first-look film deal at Universal Pictures, and Dan Cohen of 21 Laps is his producing partner.

  In 2026, Powell starred in the black comedy thriller How to Make a Killing, as Becket. Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote that Powell is sleek enough to cruise through a movie, much like Tom Cruise. He said Powell shares Cruise's quick-fire intelligence and always seems to be thinking, deciding and calculating.

  Powell also voiced Fox McCloud in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Glenn Garner of Deadline Hollywood wrote that he "shined" as the voice of the character.

  The slate continues. Next comes The Great Beyond, a fantasy film from J. J. Abrams, opposite Jenna Ortega and Emma Mackey. In 2027, he will appear opposite Cristin Milioti in The Comeback King, directed by Judd Apatow, about a country-western star in free-fall. Powell co-wrote it and produces it through Barnstorm.

  In March 2026, Lionsgate acquired a crocodile feature spec script titled The Death Roll. Barnstorm is set to produce it.

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