There are a handful of things Glen Powell does in the first three minutes of Hit Man that immediately convey the earnestness, and nerdiness, of the philosophy professor we’ll be following the rest of the movie. Gary Johnson sits so close to the steering wheel of his Honda Civic—so alert and aware of his surroundings—that he has to keep his wrists crooked at a 45-degree angle with his hands at a textbook 10-and-2 position. In his class, Gary gesticulates passionately about Nietzsche and flutters his lips in faux consideration when his students take their time participating. He tugs at the waist of his jean shorts when he’s uncomfortable, even though the jorts are already held firmly in place by a braided belt. When he walks, he kicks his be-socked, be-sandaled feet out like a golden retriever learning to wear rain shoes for the first time. He rarely furrows his brow. Because he’s happy. Or, at least, as he says, “content.”
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Then, all at once, he changes. Instead of the philosophy professor we’ve quickly come to know, we see a Nutty Professor–level collection of not-Garys. Gary has a side hustle working the gadgets on sting operations for the New Orleans Police Department, and things get much more interesting when he’s asked to go undercover as a sting’s fake hit man. As a preternaturally gifted scumbag chameleon, Gary throws himself into becoming the perfect hit man to entrap each new Louisianian who’s attempting to outsource their murderous intentions to a third party. Suddenly, Powell is playing a scarily accurate Patrick Bateman. Then he’s the evil love child of Tilda Swinton and Anton Chigurh. Then he has shark eyes and a leather trench coat and silver teeth and a Russian accent, and I don’t know why, but it’s working.
Finally, Glen Powell is Ron—who is maybe just Glen Powell, but is definitely not Gary, as he is the hottest, coolest man of all time. Everyone wants to have sex with Ron, even the New Orleans PD folks who know that deep down, he’s just Gary. Madison Masters—a skittish wife played by Adria Arjona who is looking to have her husband killed—definitely wants to have sex with Ron, even when she thinks he’s a murderer; by the time she finds out that Ron is actually Gary, she has committed a murder, causing Gary to merge his super-identity with Ron so that Ron-Gary and Madison can do a murder together, then live happily ever after. The point here is that Hit Man is a movie about two people matching each other’s freak. It’s a movie about whether reality is really objective, or whether we have some autonomy over our own circumstances. It is, very much, a movie about bits …
And it’s also a movie about what an intelligent and talented star Glen Powell is.
You’re familiar with Glen Powell, right? He’s got a face to launch a thousand ships? A personality to charm his way right out of any ships that were ultimately launched? He shines brighter on-screen than a diamond catching the light of the sun? He’s something of a Richard Linklater muse, as well as a collaborator (he and Linklater cowrote Hit Man and previously worked together on Everybody Wants Some!!)? He’s been announced by the press as the next big Hollywood star on a semiannual basis for the past six-ish years? Listen, we can’t help it—Powell is a star, and with Hit Man, he finally has his vehicle to really shine. (And also to wear wigs. Lots of wigs.)
For the Powell-pilled among us, the obsession may have begun, as mine did, when he played the Chad of all Chads in Scream Queens. (Anyone who can withstand the Ryan Murphy machine and come out the other side doing rom-coms has Hollywood mettle, indeed.) Appreciators of charisma–to–screen time ratios might have first encountered him as a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him-so-try-not-to-blink John Glenn in Hidden Figures. Most scene-stealer aficionados probably clocked him as one to watch in Everybody Wants Some!! Lovers of love (and amazing chemistry) may recall a younger, messier Powell ushering in the Netflix rom-com renaissance with Zoey Deutch in Set It Up. And with blockbusters like Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone but You, he’s ascended to Hollywood leading man status.
But Hit Man is the first Glen Powell movie: cowritten by him and for him, featuring that giant, handsome Hollywood face in just about every scene. Now, with Hit Man currently holding down the no. 1 spot on Netflix, Powell’s face splashed all over spoofy Hollywood billboards, and the impending July arrival of Twisters (2 Fast 2 Furious), it’s officially the Summer of Glen Powell. And given that his star status skews far beyond just that giant, handsome face, here’s everything you need to know to get on board with Glen Powell Summer (cowboy hat is optional, a love of the movies is not).
Glen Powell … was in the Spy Kids franchise.
Glen Powell didn’t arrive on the scene fully formed. He’s not an industry plant. Other than, y’know … having planted himself in the industry. At the ripe old age of 13, his love of making movies began, appropriately, on the set of Spy Kids: 3-D, in which he played that classic character Long-Fingered Boy. It’s hard to imagine that anyone this good-looking could have anything humble about them, but those are relatively humble, long-fingered beginnings. And even better—he’s proud of them. Prepare to be charmed by Glen Powell as he waxes poetic to The Hollywood Reporter about his education on the Spy Kids: 3D set (and also correctly identifies which shampoo commercial first introduced him to Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten”).
Glen Powell … is from Texas.
That’s important, I promise. Being from Texas creates strong bonds (from Powell to Linklater—from Linklater to Powell to me). Powell presumably has a full log of Texas Monthly long-form articles he wants to turn into movies, as he and Linklater did with the 2001 Skip Hollandsworth piece about a philosophy professor who went undercover as a hit man. Texas has a culture all its own, and even for a striver like Glen, those ties can keep you grounded. Powell is always surrounded by his family at premieres (at the Hit Man premiere, his parents brought signs that read, “STOP TRYING TO MAKE GLEN POWELL HAPPEN” and “IT’S NEVER GONNA HAPPEN”). The Powells’ goofy grins stand as definitive proof that DNA is real. And as far as Texas things go, Glen’s dog is named Brisket, for goodness’ sake.
Also, not for nothing—this Texas man knows tornadoes.
Glen Powell … keeps a coterie of (semi-)famous friends.
Hands down, the thing I’m most obsessed with about Powell’s rise to stardom is that he continues to throw semiannual weekend-long ragers at his parents’ ranch in Texas. These ragers consist of the absolute wildest collection of celebrities, ranging all the way from D- to A-list. You might spot someone from Glee, someone from New Girl, someone from Bridgerton, someone from Full House (that person is always John Stamos)—and they’re all mixed in there, doing the slip and slide with Glen’s entire family. Glen doesn’t just keep himself connected to his roots: He keeps half of Hollywood connected to his roots, which is definitely strange, but is also a charmingly unique bit of humanity between the glitz and the glam.
Glen Powell … values mentors.
But probably the thing Powell is most known for off the silver screen is taking on mentors like he’s a junior sales representative trying to make his way up the corporate ladder. And that is what truly sets him apart as a rising A-list star: He wants box office success, and he’s happy to talk about it. “I find the gamification of the business fun,” he told The New York Times earlier this month. “To be a lasting success in Hollywood, you have to make people money. … You have to go, ‘Who is the audience for this? Are you giving people a reason to buy tickets?’”
To find other actors with that mindset, Powell’s had to reach back to his predecessors. They might not show up to slip and slide camp at his parents’ house, but he’s been collecting top-tier mentors since his career began (which, as a reminder, was in Spy Kids: 3D). Denzel Washington gave him the very Denzel Washington advice to stay in your lane and not worry about what people are doing outside it when they were in The Great Debaters together in 2007. (And Denzel credits himself with Glen’s success, given that he told him to double down on acting when Powell was just a senior in high school.) Another Powell adviser, Matthew McConaughey, is the one who told him that you can invest in the Hollywood machine, sure, but don’t forget that Hollywood is the Matrix: “You plug in and it’s all fake world.”
Powell, to his credit, seems less invested in how to become the next big movie star and more invested in how to keep starring in movies—and making sure those movies are not just good, but big. This is an actor who uses every part of the Hollywood buffalo and who’s modeled his entire career after Tom Cruise. Notoriously, Cruise was so invested in Powell’s development during Top Gun: Maverick (and Powell was so invested in being in Top Gun: Maverick) that he sent Powell to a theater to watch a six-hour “film school” movie he had put together for friends. Powell watched every second of it.
Glen Powell … is an excellent colleague.
So it makes sense that people want to work with him. But more importantly, they seem to want to work with him again and again. Which brings us to the conclusion that Glen Powell must just be incredibly likable. Powell and Deutch are dying to team up again; he and Sydney Sweeney had such a good time on their Anyone but You press tour that rumors popped up that they were dating (a classic, you guys); and Linklater has been hiring Glen since he was a teenager in Fast Food Nation. Hit Man marked their fourth team-up and Glen’s official graduation from colleague to collaborator.
Plus, Glen’s now on Cruise’s weird coconut cake list, so that must mean something. (Cool, but do be careful, Glen Powell!)
Glen Powell … likes this.
Tortured artists are great. Weird guys who live in Ohio as recluses and then light up the screen when called upon are cool. Poetic little monsters who insist they love everything about acting except for the fame are perfectly valid. But sometimes it’s nice to just have a good old-fashioned extrovert in the role of movie star. Please watch the way Powell just yaps through the entire process of being turned into numerous different hit men:
Glen Powell … can be wrong.
A very funny thing happened during the Hit Man press tour when Glen Powell went on a podcast and told a story about his sister’s friend going on a date with a creep who rubbed her down in “black market lotion” that she would later find out is designed to break down skin for human consumption …
That is, of course, a decades-old urban legend that Glen spent, I guess, years thinking was fully true. And honestly, it brings a certain himbo je ne sais quoi back into the Glen Powell equation that had been sorely missing since he started cowriting movies with Linklater. Because it’s honestly not fair that any person who’s this good-looking could also be smart and a good judge of urban legends. He also immediately acknowledged that he’s been falsely telling this story all over town, and you know what? That’s fine, because Glen Powell, like Reese Witherspoon, simply believes that women’s stories matter. They just do!
Glen Powell is … apparently, SORT OF, She’s All That–able.
Listen, I won’t act like Powell wasn’t still serving face under his wire-rimmed glasses, but his portrayal of Gary in Hit Man is proof that he can tuck away being a full-fledged hottie and just act. There’s a moment two-thirds of the way through the movie when he transforms from Ron back into Gary, and he doesn’t have to put the glasses back on or de-pomade his hair to do it—he just uses his face and his body and his voice. For me, that is his truest star turn yet.
Glen Powell is… everywhere.
This summer, Hit Man is sitting pretty at no. 1 on Netflix and has a 97 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes; Powell stars in the forthcoming sequel to Twister with Daisy Edgar-Jones—which no one seems mad about, a true rarity for a reboot—and to be frank, someone has finally figured out what to do with his hair. It’s perfect. It’s the Summer of Glen Powell. And after this summer? He’s got an A24 dramatic thriller, a legal drama produced by Adam McKay, an Amazon adaptation of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which he’ll play the Robert Redford role, a comedic Hulu series in which he’ll once again be a guy named Chad, and maybe even a remake of Heaven Can Wait with him in the Warren Beatty part. That prolific schedule can mean only three things: more mentors, more box office dollars, and a lot more declaring that Glen Powell is a star. And so what—he is!
