A Unified Theory of Glen Powell

Let's go to the movies to see a movie star!!!!

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Powell on the street in New York last week (Raymond Hall/GC Images)

Three weeks ago, I felt like Glen Powell had been manufactured in a lab to become the next Hollywood star. I didn’t like him, I didn’t get him. He seemed bland. Handsome, sure, but in a boring way. Maybe, like me, you miss movie stars — but if this was the best on offer, you could stay satisfied with, I dunno, Chris Evans.

I’d somehow avoided seeing Anyone But You when it became the sleeper rom-com hit of last summer. I’ve recently been too busy with America’s Sweethearts and Shogun to watch Hit Man. Plane movies stress me out so I’d avoided the new Top Gun.

But this week, I carved out an evening for Hit Man. And then I went and saw Twisters in the theater. And then spent a perfect, delicious evening watching Anyone But You. I watched the Top Gun: Mavericks supercut of just Hangman (his character) so many times I gave in and rented the movie. I’ve read dozens of interviews and watched dozens more TikToks. 

And then some pieces started coming together — or, more accurately, I began to remember a whole bunch of Past Powell. He had been the best, weirdest part of Everybody Wants Some, Linklater’s spiritual sequel to Dazed & Confused. He was the male lead in Set It Up, arguably the best rom-com of the last five years that isn’t Anyone But You. The hair was flatter and longer, but those two performances were hinting towards what I now understand as the core of the Powell appeal.

Glen Powell isn’t just being framed as a movie star. He is a fucking movie star — but you have to go to the fucking movies to understand it. Once you see him onscreen, and particularly once you see him onscreen in the three movies of the past year, I promise it’ll make sense. He doesn’t even have to be your type (and you don’t even have to like dudes) for it to make sense. It’s a rare thing, really — a movie star who feels so indubitably like a movie star. Tom Cruise has it, George Clooney has it, Denzel Washington has it. William Powell — one of the biggest stars of Classic Hollywood, and who I always think of when I hear Glen Powell’s name — had it too.

Part of it is charisma, of course. But not everyone with charisma is a good movie star. So here’s my attempt at a unified theory — or, as is generally the case around here, a bunch of sub-theories that contribute to a larger theory.

1) Glen Powell Looks Good in Clothes

A film studies professor of mine used to employ this phrase to explain the ineffable, impossible charm of Cary Grant: he looks so good in clothes. All clothes. And the same is true for Powell. He looks good in the linen suit he wears in Anyone But You. He looks fucking fantastic in boots and jeans in Twisters. He wears the Top Gun uniform better than Tom Cruise, which is to say, he wears it like Val Kilmer. He looks perfect in jorts in Everybody Wants Some. And his Gary get-up in Hit Man, which is equal parts leather car jacket skeeze and GQ, is bewilderingly attractive.

He even looks good — weirdly good, but good! — in all of the other costumes he wears for Hit Man. And yes, of course Glen Powell has the ridiculous body that is now par for the course for all Hollywood A-list actors, and has access on-set and off to the sort of tailoring most of us can only dream of. But to look that good in a suit and jorts and boots speaks more to the way he carries his body in those clothes. It’s not “I know I look good” so much as “I can pull this off.”

For instance: Glen Powell grew up in Austin, went to UT, loves the Longhorns, and is very I fucking love Austin in the way people who could afford living there often are. But growing up in Austin does not mean that you will look good in a cowboy hat or boots; in fact, it’s usually a guarantee that you will buy them and look like a doof. And yet:

@graciieryannbut like on a real note the plot was amazing 🌪️ 🤩 #twister #twisters #glenpowell #twistersmovie #cowboys #tornadowrangler #anyonebutyou

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You could call this straight white middle-class guy confidence, but all of the straight white middle-class guys I know are not movie stars, in part because they do not wear their clothes the way Glen Powell wears his clothes. His clothes feel fluid with his movement, at home on his body, never an encumbrance. But the hotness factor only really activates with movement. I looked up the linen suit from Anyone But You, and in a still, it looks kinda dorky???

But here it is in action:

@anthonyorofino#gotmestarted #anyonebutyou #unwritten #natashabedingfield #movie #romanticcomedy #sydneysweeney #glenpowell #australia #dancing #boat #love #trending #fyp #viral

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This might seem slightly overdone if you don’t know the context of the scene (they’re trying to convince other people on the boat that they’re actually dating), but the way Powell looks at Sydney Sweeney in these shots highlights the heart of his sex appeal, namely:

2) Glen Powell Likes Women

Star image is always an amalgamation of roles and “real life” public performance, so some of this overarching feeling stems from the way he looks at Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You, but also the way his character flirts in Everybody Wants Some and how he relates and defers to Daisy Edgar-Jones’ character in Twisters and his extended eye contact with Adria Arjona in Hit Man. It’s different than knowing you can get women, or wanting to control women, or even loving women. He likes them. He appreciates them. He enjoys their company.

Tom Cruise doesn’t like women. Neither does Miles Teller. Channing Tatum likes women. So does Ryan Gosling. Brad Pitt used to like women but doesn’t anymore. Leonardo Di Caprio only likes them occasionally. Bradley Cooper doesn’t, George Clooney does. Matt Damon doesn’t, Ben Affleck only does in that one scene in the J.Lo documentary. Marlon Brando didn’t, Montgomery Clift did. Paul Newman didn’t onscreen but did IRL. Cary Grant did, John Wayne definitely, definitely didn’t. Will Smith pretends like he doesn’t but I’m not convinced. Mark Wahlberg absolutely does not, but Daniel Day-Lewis does. So does Paul Mescal. 

It's palpable in the way Powell looks at all these women — he really, intently focuses on them, which is a surprisingly rare thing onscreen and in real life. But some of it’s tied to that same confidence that makes him look good in clothes: it’s a lot easier to not be an asshole when you’re not obsessed with performing dominance. (The confidence also comes through in his willingness to go along with press shenanigans, like performing the apple dance with his Twisters co-stars)

@indiewire#Twisters cast members Anthony Ramos, Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Glen Powell do the Charli XCX “Apple” dance trend. #indiewire

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3.) Glen Powell Is In On The Joke

The best hot people know their hotness is hilarious — and can be manipulated to great comedic effect. There are jokes throughout Hit Men, Anyone But You, and Twisters that work only because Powell leans into them fully: his fear of flying, “grounding” song, and “hot girl” bod/bad swimming in Anyone But You; Daisy Edgar-Jones’ persistent ribbing in Twisters (the scene when he gives her mom the shirt, I died); the entire conceit of Hit Man, which requires him to play a nerdy mandal-wearing philosophy professor who’s really into birding but can act like a hot guy on command. 

This sort of perspective on fame is often borne of long, arduous slogs through Hollywood. Powell started acting as a teen, left college at the University of Texas to move to Hollywood after a small star turn in The Great Debaters, then slogged through his 20s in tiny roles before getting slightly bigger (still small) parts in his early 30s. You pick up a work ethic navigating Hollywood this way — and a certain humility. You also enter stardom as a grown-ass adult.

George Clooney is the most classic contemporary example, but you could see it, too, in so many of the classic Hollywood stars who spent years churning through the star machine until their studio figured out how audiences wanted to like them. There’s a maturity, a kindness, and a gameness. If you watch interviews with him, he’s never bored, never faking it. Stardom, at least at this point, is not wearying. It’s not as source of trauma. It’s fun and it’s funny in a way that’s infectious. Also he looks good shotgunning this beer onstage:

@itsdanitourGlen Powell shotgunning a beer was the hottest thing I ever seen in my life 🔥🔥 #glenpowell #shotgun #metlifestadium #lukecombs #country #countrymusic #beer #twisters #twistersmovie

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4.) Glen Powell Does His Homework:

Powell started off at UT as an Radio-Television-Film (RTF) major in 2008 — which means that he almost certainly had one of my grad school friends as a TA. (I was a TA for more than 300 students during my time at UT, and I searched my emails looking for a Glen but ALAS). But the point remains: Powell knows Hollywood history, and he’s taken the classic RTF course on “narrative strategies” (aka how a movie works).

Maybe he learned something back then, or maybe he learned something navigating bit roles for a decade. He almost certainly learned something from Richard Linklater, who directed him in a bit role in Fast Food Nation, then cast him in the closest-to-a-Matthew-McConnaghey-breakout-role in Everybody Wants Some, and then agreed to co-write the script for Hit Man after Powell approached him with the idea to adapt a classic Skip Hollingsworth piece from Texas Monthly. (Linklater had apparently tried to adapt it for years). He reads his reviews. He’s a big fan of the Big Picture podcast. He watches other movies. I realize all of that sounds mundane, but it’s a surprisingly rare way to navigate the industry. He knows how stars can rise and expand and explode. 

Twisters has outperformed all projections and positioned Powell as a guy who can open a movie, which is likely leading to all sorts of overtures and offers. There’s a chance he’s lured into a franchise, as seemingly every new bankable man has over the last twenty years, but I don’t see a George Clooney-in-the-bad-batman-suit turn for him. And even though he’s proven himself a very effective rom-com lead, I also don’t see him getting stuck in the whirlpool of increasingly rom-com banality like Matthew McConaughey in the 2000s. He might overestimate his talent behind the camera like Affleck or Clooney, but his work on Hit Man strikes me as the sort of collaboration he finds ideal. (I also love the idea of him doing Regency; Sheila O’Malley makes the case here)

This conversation between Powell and McConaughey himself doesn’t predict the future, but it does suggest that he’s extremely mindful of the past:

McCONAUGHEY: I’ve usually zigged when I felt like Hollywood wanted me to zag. When I had my rom-com years, there was only so much bandwidth I could give to those, and those were some solid hits for me. But I wanted to try some other stuff. Of course I wasn’t getting it, so I had to leave Hollywood for two years.

POWELL: What does that look like when you’re in it? Are you aware it’s going to be a two-year break?

McCONAUGHEY: Dude, it was scary. I had long talks with my wife about needing to find a new vocation. “I think I’m going to teach high school classes. I think I’m going to study to be a conductor. I think I’m going to go be a wildlife guide.” I honestly thought, “I stepped out of Hollywood. I got out of my lane.” The lane Hollywood said I should stay in, and Hollywood’s like, “Well, fuck you, dude. You should have stayed in your lane. Later.”

POWELL: Yeah!

McCONAUGHEY: It was scary. The days are long—the sense of insignificance. But I made up my mind that that’s what I needed to do, so I wasn’t going to pull the parachute and quit the mission I was on. But it was scary, because I didn’t know if I was ever going to get out of the desert.

POWELL: For sure. Watching my heroes and being a student of Hollywood history, I’ve tried not to listen to ghost stories. Because if you pay too much attention to people who stepped out of Hollywood and then all of a sudden the train left and it never came back, you’re like—

McCONAUGHEY: There’s plenty of those stories.

POWELL: At the end of the day, I do believe that there’s a natural breathing pattern to Hollywood where you give it all you got, you’re in everybody’s faces, and then you disappear for a hot minute and let them miss you, and then you come back. You have to buy into the longer journey. Trust in the decades-long career rather than the short and intense one.

McCONAUGHEY: Lean horse, long ride. I don’t know about you, but for me, going back to A Time to Kill, after I first had a big success in a major studio picture and became famous, I remembered that the Thursday before that movie opened, there’s 100 scripts out there that I would’ve done, and 99 of them I could not book. Over that one weekend, 99 noes became 99 yeses. I was like, “What? Three days ago, I’d have done any of these! And now you’re asking me which one I want to do?” It was a hell of a shocking thing. I chucked on a backpack and went to Peru for three weeks just so I could hear myself think. Have you had to go, “I would’ve done any of these roles, but now I’ve got to be discerning?”

POWELL: I had a small role in Hidden Figures, but I had such a good feeling about that movie and what it would become. It’s that point in your career where you’re barely getting by. I think I made $35,000 on that movie, and it was the only movie I made that year. There’s a lot of things I could have done in terms of guest spots, but basically, I made a decision to use my old UT economics class, which is just supply and demand, and take supply out of it and hope demand would follow. Just letting the town know I’m not going to take those things that are the obvious choices that guys take at this moment in their career. That was the hardest part for me, because I was dead broke. But I remembered at that moment trying to be discerning and not go down the wrong path.

We might feel Powell-saturated right now, but there won’t be another Powell film out for at least a year — and there’s nothing on the horizon after that. He knows what he’s doing. He’s making the long play. 

There are other things I could talk about here — the fact that he doesn’t look gross when he kisses, doesn’t look ridiculous when he dances, and the way his eyes are just slightly too close together, creating the sort of aesthetic imperfection that distinguishes so many of the great movie stars of the past. And while I’ve broken down some of the things that make him feel like a movie star, the thing about the real ones is that they can’t be engineered or even totally explained. They’re the result of raw star material activated by a series of roles.

And in an era when so much of the culture surrounding us feels regurgitated cost-adverse AI slop, the presence of something even slightly inexplicable feels like a gift. Sometimes you can sense a movie star the first moment they walk into the frame — like Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise. But the best ones, I think, don’t immediately make sense. That’s how I was for months, for years. But now — I can’t look away. I think I might go see Twisters in the theater again? Whew. What a fucking movie star. ●

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