Glen Powell

Glen Powell (born October 21, 1988) is an American actor, producer, and writer whose career has run on one of the longest slow burns in modern Hollywood before snapping into full leading-man status almost overnight. He spent nearly two decades grinding through bit parts, guest spots, and supporting roles before a three-year stretch from 2022 to 2025 turned him into one of the most recognizable faces of his generation. Audiences now know him as Jake “Hangman” Seresin in Top Gun: Maverick, as the unlikely charmer opposite Sydney Sweeney in Anyone but You, as the soft-spoken storm chaser Tyler Owens in Twisters, and as the title character in Edgar Wright’s The Running Man.

What separates Powell from the usual leading-man mold is that he writes, produces, and builds his own opportunities. He co-wrote Hit Man with Richard Linklater, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination and nearly universal critical praise. He co-created and stars in the Hulu sports comedy Chad Powers with Michael Waldron, and he runs his own production company, Barnstorm, under a first-look deal with Universal Pictures. His path ran through Scream Queens, a John Glenn cameo in Hidden Figures, years of near-misses, and a cross-country move from Los Angeles back to Austin before Hollywood finally caught up with where he had been heading all along.

Powell has built his public persona around charm, self-awareness, and a willingness to poke fun at the leading-man image he keeps being handed. He is a licensed pilot (Tom Cruise paid for his flight school after Top Gun: Maverick), a superfan of the Texas Longhorns, and the devoted dog dad to Brisket, the rescue terrier who upstaged him at the Twisters premiere. He is also, as of 2026, formally re-enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin to finish the Radio-Television-Film degree he left behind at 19.

People also read: Sydney Sweeney (Anyone but You), Daisy Edgar-Jones (Twisters), Jenna Ortega (The Great Beyond), Tom Cruise (Top Gun: Maverick)

Quick Facts

Trailer Video

Video courtesy of Paramount Pictures’s official YouTube channel.

Early Life & Education

Glen Thomas Powell Jr. was born October 21, 1988, in Austin, Texas, the only son of Glen Powell Sr., an executive coach, and Cyndy Powell, a homemaker. He has two sisters, Lauren (older) and Leslie (younger). His father’s family is of Polish and Lipka Tatar descent (the original family surname was Chutsky), and his mother’s side traces back to German and Welsh roots. Growing up in Austin meant growing up inside one of the country’s most active independent film scenes, which turned out to matter more than anyone in the Powell household realized at the time.

The story Powell has repeated in interview after interview is that his interest in movies began at age five, when his father took him to see Jurassic Park. He watched it on endless loop, then started shooting his own tiny home-video science fiction shorts with friends as the cast. His parents, recognizing an obsession rather than a phase, enrolled him in the Austin Musical Theatre program in 1999, where he worked through The Music Man, Oliver, and The Sound of Music in supporting and understudy roles. His break came through geography as much as talent: Robert Rodriguez, casting Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over in Austin in 2003, needed local hires, and a 14-year-old Glen Powell walked into the room and walked out with his first credit as “Long-fingered Boy.”

He kept working through Westwood High School, where he was an all-state lacrosse player, a football player, and a member of the business club, picking up minor roles in The Wendell Baker Story (2005) and Fast Food Nation (2006) along the way. The pivotal moment came senior year, when he was cast in Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters (2007) after a live table read. Washington pulled him aside and told him bluntly that if he was serious about acting he needed to move to Los Angeles. Powell graduated from Westwood in 2007 and enrolled at the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, a year he has called “the greatest year of my entire life.” He left after one year to chase Washington’s advice to LA, and he did not finish the degree until he re-enrolled in 2024 in UT’s Radio-Television-Film program. As of 2026, he is still a student, taking classes via Zoom between shoots and scheduled to graduate in May 2027.

Career Highlights and Milestones

Powell’s twenties in Los Angeles were the kind of long, grinding stretch that he now talks about more openly than he once could. He bounced between guest spots on CSI: Miami, Without a Trace, and Rizzoli & Isles, took a small part in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and did his time in The Expendables 3 (2014). He has described the period as humbling in a way that only Hollywood can be, where getting invited to audition was the achievement and working as a “manny” (a male nanny) helped pay rent. His real breakout came through Fox’s Scream Queens (2015 to 2016), where his work as the preening, hyper-confident Chad Radwell showed a comic instinct that had not been obvious in his earlier work.

The run from 2016 onward reads like a slow accumulation of currency. Richard Linklater cast him as Finnegan in Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), the spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused, a performance that finally announced Powell as a screen presence rather than a utility player. Later that year he played astronaut John Glenn in Hidden Figures, the Oscar-nominated NASA drama that earned the cast a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance. Set It Up (2018) on Netflix gave him his first real romantic-comedy lead opposite Zoey Deutch and drew the kind of reviews that critics used to give early-era Matthew McConaughey. For the next few years, though, Powell remained a name known inside Hollywood more than outside it, producing quietly, pitching projects, and staying ready.

The turn came with Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, the $1.49 billion Tom Cruise legacy sequel that finally let Powell play the kind of cocky, charismatic Air Force jock audiences had been waiting to see him play. Cruise, famously, paid for Powell to get his private pilot’s license during pre-production. The same year brought the quieter aviation drama Devotion, in which Powell played Navy aviator Tom Hudner alongside Jonathan Majors, and Linklater’s animated Apollo 10½, where Powell voiced NASA engineer Bostick. Anyone but You (December 2023), opposite Sydney Sweeney, became one of the surprise hits of the year, grossing $220 million worldwide and resurrecting the theatrical rom-com as a viable genre. The two stars famously “leaned into” offscreen chemistry rumors as marketing; Powell has been open that it was strategic.

2024 tilted the axis again. Hit Man, which Powell co-wrote and produced with Linklater, premiered at Venice in 2023 and released on Netflix in June 2024 to some of the strongest reviews of the year. Critics singled out Powell’s work as a “genuine star-clinching turn.” The performance earned him his first Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, as well as a WGA nomination for Adapted Screenplay. A month later, Twisters, the standalone sequel to the 1996 original, cast him as YouTube storm chaser Tyler Owens and grossed $372 million worldwide on its way to becoming one of the summer’s biggest hits. Powell took the Twisters run as a victory lap for his home state, filming in Oklahoma City, moving back to Austin, and showing up to premieres with his rescue dog, Brisket, who briefly became more famous than most of the film’s supporting cast.

2025 was built around reinvention and reach. In January, Powell announced the formation of his production company, Barnstorm, with a first-look deal at Universal Pictures and Dan Cohen (of Stranger Things producer 21 Laps) as his partner. In September, Chad Powers premiered on Hulu, a sports comedy Powell created and produced with Michael Waldron (Loki, Heels), based on an Eli Manning prank sketch. Playing disgraced quarterback Russ Holliday, who disguises himself with prosthetics to join a struggling college football team, Powell drew a polarized but largely enthusiastic response: mixed reviews for the concept, strong reviews for his performance, and a quick renewal for Season 2. In November, Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, adapted from Stephen King’s 1982 novel, cast Powell as Ben Richards, the working-class father who enters a televised death game to save his sick daughter. The film received mostly positive reviews (62 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a Stephen King personal endorsement) but was a commercial underperformer theatrically, grossing $69 million against a $110 million budget. On Paramount+, it became one of the year’s biggest streaming hits, sitting at No. 1 for weeks.

2026 so far has been the busiest month of his career on record. On April 1, Powell voiced Fox McCloud in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. The following week, Universal retitled his Judd Apatow comedy The Comeback King with a February 2027 release locked in. A few days later, J.J. Abrams premiered the trailer for The Great Beyond at CinemaCon. A few days after that, Prime Video announced Powell as an executive producer on Calamities, a drama series from Hunters creator David Weil. And by mid-April, Them! casting rumors had him in talks to headline Warner Bros.’ giant-ant remake from composer-director Michael Giacchino. This is roughly the rhythm he has maintained for three straight years, pairing big commercial plays with writing, producing, and franchise-building infrastructure. Powell, more than almost any current star, is both the talent and the operator.

Selected film and TV highlights

• Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003, film debut at 14)
• The Wendell Baker Story (2005)
• Fast Food Nation (2006)
• The Great Debaters (2007, with Denzel Washington)
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012, minor role)
• The Expendables 3 (2014)
• Scream Queens (2015 to 2016, TV breakthrough as Chad Radwell)
• Everybody Wants Some!! (2016, Richard Linklater)
• Hidden Figures (2016, as astronaut John Glenn)
• Sand Castle (2017)
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)
• Set It Up (2018, Netflix rom-com opposite Zoey Deutch)
• Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022, voice)
• Top Gun: Maverick (2022, as Hangman)
• Devotion (2022, as Tom Hudner)
• Anyone but You (2023, opposite Sydney Sweeney)
• Hit Man (2023/2024, co-writer and star)
• Twisters (2024, as Tyler Owens)
• Chad Powers (2025, Hulu series; co-creator, producer, star)
• The Running Man (2025, as Ben Richards)
• The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026, voice of Fox McCloud)

Major recognition

• Screen Actors Guild Award, Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for Hidden Figures (won, 2017)
• Golden Globe Award nomination, Best Actor (Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy) for Hit Man (2025)
• Writers Guild of America Award nomination, Adapted Screenplay for Hit Man (2025, shared with Richard Linklater)
• People’s Choice Award nomination, Comedy Movie Star of the Year for Anyone But You (2024)
• Palm Springs International Film Festival, Ensemble Cast Award for Hidden Figures (won, 2017)
• CinemaCon Breakthrough Performer of the Year honor for Top Gun: Maverick, Apollo 10½, and Devotion (2023)

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• Jenna Ortega Net Worth, Life Story, & Facts
• Tom Cruise Net Worth, Life Story, & Facts

Awards and Accolades

Filmography / Notable Works

Net Worth, Income, & Lifestyle

Social Media & Online Presence

Fan communities on social media (unofficial)

NOTE: In addition to Powell’s verified accounts above, many fan-run pages and clip accounts exist across Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube. These are not confirmed to be affiliated with Glen Powell. Links and usernames can change at any time, and fan accounts routinely appear and disappear around release windows. Treat any account not linked to @glenpowell as unofficial.

Trivia & Lesser-Known Facts

• Powell is a licensed pilot. Tom Cruise personally paid for him to attend flight school as a gift during Top Gun: Maverick preproduction. Powell has said the wings ended up “cooler than the wheels.”
• His parents, Cyndy and Glen Sr., make cameos in nearly every film he appears in, a running family tradition that started in his early career and has become a recognizable part of his press rollouts.
• He was a Texas all-state lacrosse player at Westwood High School before acting became his full focus. He also played football, and the athletic background was central to casting him in Everybody Wants Some!!, Top Gun: Maverick, and Chad Powers.
• His father’s side of the family is Polish and Lipka Tatar, and the family’s original surname was Chutsky. Powell named his character in Sand Castle (2017) Sgt. Dylan Chutsky as a nod to the original family name.
• He adopted his rescue dog Brisket from the Labelle Foundation in July 2023 while filming Twisters in Oklahoma. Brisket’s internet fame briefly rivaled the film’s during the 2024 promotional tour, including a cover shoot for Entertainment Weekly.
• Powell returned to the University of Texas at Austin in 2024 after a 17-year absence to finish the Radio-Television-Film degree he began in 2007. He is currently enrolled remotely through Zoom and is expected to graduate in May 2027.
• A 2007 interview at the premiere of The Great Debaters captured a teenage Powell telling a visibly skeptical reporter that his resolution for the new year was “to be Denzel Washington.” The clip resurfaced online during his 2023 to 2024 breakthrough run.
• In November 2024, a Glen Powell lookalike contest was held in Austin. The winner, a physician’s assistant named Maxwell Braunstein, was flown to the 2025 Golden Globes red carpet as Powell’s guest.
• His production company Barnstorm, formed in January 2025, takes its name from the barnstorming stunt pilots of the 1920s, a nod to his own pilot’s license.
• Powell turned down a role in Jurassic World Rebirth to headline The Running Man instead.

Quotes

“As a struggling actor, there’s no harder place to live than being in Hollywood with nothing going on. The currency of that town is how relevant you are and what your last job is. It makes you oppressively self-aware.”

– Glen Powell, Vanity Fair 2025 Hollywood Issue (Nov 2024)

“I’ve never been Mr Cool. And what’s funny is that you start getting cast in certain things, like Hangman is not me, right? I’m not that guy.”

– Glen Powell, GQ October 2025 cover story

“That’s people wanting what’s on the screen off the screen, and sometimes you just have to lean into it a bit.”

– Glen Powell on the Anyone but You press tour, The New York Times (2024)

“You have to believe in the Hollywood legends of those people that you admire, the people that you’re chasing, that had those long stretches of famine as well.”

– Glen Powell, Vanity Fair 2025 Hollywood Issue (Nov 2024)

“I want to be Denzel Washington.”

– Glen Powell, teenage red-carpet interview at The Great Debaters premiere (Dec 2007)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: What is Glen Powell’s age?
A: He was born on October 21, 1988, which makes him 37 years old as of 2026.

Q: What is Glen Powell best known for?
A: He is widely known for playing Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), the lead in Anyone but You (2023), the co-writer and star of Hit Man (2024), Tyler Owens in Twisters (2024), and Ben Richards in Edgar Wright’s The Running Man (2025). He also co-created and stars in the Hulu series Chad Powers (2025).

Q: Where is Glen Powell from?
A: He was born and raised in Austin, Texas, and moved back there from Los Angeles in 2024.

Q: Has Glen Powell won an Oscar?
A: No, not at this point. He has been part of Oscar-nominated films (Hidden Figures, Top Gun: Maverick), and his own work was recognized with a Golden Globe nomination for Hit Man and a WGA nomination for the same screenplay. An Oscar nomination remains an open question as he builds his leading-man catalog.

Q: Is Glen Powell married?
A: No. As of early 2026, he is dating actress Michelle Randolph (Landman). He was previously in a long-term relationship with model Gigi Paris from roughly 2019 to 2023.

Q: Does Glen Powell have official social media?
A: Yes. His verified Instagram is @glenpowell (approximately 3 million followers), and his verified X account is @glenpowell. His rescue dog Brisket also maintains a separate Instagram at @hotbrisket. Treat any account not linked from those profiles as unofficial.

Q: Is Glen Powell a licensed pilot?
A: Yes. He earned his private pilot’s license during preproduction on Top Gun: Maverick. His co-star Tom Cruise paid for the flight school as a gift.

Upcoming Projects

• The Great Beyond (Nov 13, 2026) – J.J. Abrams’ first directed feature since 2019, a sci-fi fantasy starring Powell opposite Jenna Ortega, with Emma Mackey, Samuel L. Jackson, Merritt Wever, and Sophie Okonedo. Post-production complete; wide theatrical release.
• Chad Powers Season 2 (late 2026) – Hulu renewed the series in December 2025. Filming began January 2026; most of the core cast is reportedly returning, including Perry Mattfeld, Steve Zahn, Frankie A. Rodriguez, and Toby Huss.
• The Comeback King (Feb 5, 2027) – Judd Apatow-directed Universal comedy co-written by Apatow and Powell. Powell plays a country-western star in free-fall, with Cristin Milioti, Madelyn Cline, Stavros Halkias, and Li Jin Hao. Filming underway in Savannah and Macon, Georgia in spring 2026.
• How to Make a Killing (TBA) – John Patton Ford black comedy thriller. Powell plays Becket Redfellow, a blue-collar man trying to reclaim a stolen inheritance. In development.
• Tesseract (TBA) – Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) sci-fi thriller for Amazon MGM Studios. Powell is the only announced cast member. Plot details remain under wraps.
• Untitled Ron Howard Firefighter Film (in development) – Written by Christina Hodson. Powell plays one of two childhood friends, now elite firefighters, reuniting in the face of Texas wildfires. Treat casting as preliminary.
• Them! (in development) – Warner Bros. remake of the 1954 giant-ant classic, directed by composer Michael Giacchino. Reports in April 2026 had Powell in talks for the lead; take as rumored until officially confirmed.
• The Death Roll (in development) – Barnstorm-produced Lionsgate crocodile thriller. Powell produces; casting not yet confirmed.
• Calamities (in development, Prime Video) – Border-town drama series from Hunters creator David Weil. Powell is executive producer only; not starring.

Interviews & Features

• Vanity Fair, “Glen Powell Recalls the Dark Years Before His Breakthrough” (Nov 2024), the Hollywood Issue profile in which Powell opens up in detail about the long stretch between Hidden Figures and Top Gun: Maverick and the mechanics of staying in the game.
• GQ, “Glen Powell Covers GQ’s State of the American Male Issue” (Sep 2025), the October 2025 cover story featuring a tongue-in-cheek photo shoot and a long interview on how he feels about being cast as the cocky leading man.
• The New York Times, “Glen Powell Wants to Be More Than Your Rom-Com Boyfriend” (Jul 2024), a Twisters-era conversation on craft, control, and the split between commercial tentpoles and writer-driven projects.
• Entertainment Weekly, “Glen Powell’s Dog Brisket Is the Real Star of Twisters” (Jul 2024), the EW cover story that turned his rescue terrier into a pop-culture figure in his own right.
• The Hollywood Reporter, “Inside Glen Powell’s Barnstorm Deal with Universal” (Jan 2025), the trade-press announcement of his production company and its Universal first-look deal, with Dan Cohen as partner.

Public Appearances & Festivals

• CinemaCon 2023 (Apr 2023): Received the Breakthrough Performer of the Year honor in Las Vegas for his combined 2022 work. His speech included his now-quoted line, “We all know you’re only one flop away from being the star of yesterday.”
• Cannes Film Festival (May 2024): Appeared in Cannes for a Q&A surrounding Hit Man‘s theatrical debut window, supporting Richard Linklater’s festival run.
• Twisters Oklahoma City Premiere (Jul 2024): Returned to the Midwest for a tornado-country Oklahoma City premiere, a decision framed by Universal as a salute to storm-chaser communities.
• Golden Globe Awards (Jan 2025): Attended the ceremony in Beverly Hills as a Best Actor (Musical/Comedy) nominee for Hit Man, bringing his parents Cyndy and Glen Sr. as his dates and meeting the winner of his Austin lookalike contest on the red carpet.
• CinemaCon 2025 (Apr 2025): Returned to Las Vegas to preview The Running Man footage with Edgar Wright and introduce its place on Paramount’s release calendar.
• New York Comic Con (Oct 2025): Hosted a Running Man panel with Edgar Wright and Lee Pace in New York, showing 12 minutes of footage and a fresh trailer.
• The Running Man New York Premiere (Nov 9, 2025): Walked the red carpet at AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York, his first major theatrical lead premiere of this scale.
• CinemaCon 2026 (Apr 14, 2026): Returned to Las Vegas where J.J. Abrams unveiled the first footage of The Great Beyond on stage with Powell and Jenna Ortega.