We hear Glen Powell before we see him in Richard Linklater’s 2016 breezy, sun-soaked college hangout movie Everybody Wants Some!!, and over the years that cocky Texan inflection has become immediately recognisable to anyone familiar with the onscreen persona he’s cultivated since. In his first major role, Powell thrums with unrestrained energy as college upperclassman Walt Finnegan, talking a mile a minute, infusing otherwise mundane lines with the theatricality of a British accent at random, loose-limbed on the dancefloor. Assured and smooth-talking, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, but he can sell you on anything, from a scoop of whipped cream (“It’s about the way the ingredients make you feel,” he coos) to a date (Walt’s patented routine for picking up women at clubs involves talking about his “average dick” so they aren’t intimidated. It shouldn’t work, but does). In Hit Man, Powell’s fourth collaboration with Linklater, his character – mild-mannered professor Gary Johnson – parlays that same irrepressible confidence and charm into selling himself. Or at least a version of him that doesn’t really exist at first.
The actor employs charisma like a concealed weapon, flipping between milquetoast philosophy and psychology professor and persuasive fake contract killer with alarming ease. Undercover, his voice gains an authoritative edge, his body language is freer, and his demeanour is more assertive. Gary Johnson recognises that he can be anybody he wants and, as the various facets of his put-on personality bleed into his original one, the transformation takes on another layer: here is an actor becoming a full-fledged movie star.
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Powell’s onscreen confidence is often inextricable from his All-American appearance – in several of his movies, characters draw attention to just how good-looking he is, with his character in 2012’s Stuck in Love simply identified as ‘Good Looking Frat Guy’ – and often bolstered by the writing making him one of the smartest people in the room. Each of his characters has always possessed a degree of unflappability, which comes in handy given his penchant for portraying figures of American authority – sergeants, colonels, astronauts, pilots, and NASA officials.
The actor first brought his good-natured amiability to the pressures of the space race in Hidden Figures (2016). “We don’t have time to be scared,” says his character – Marine Corps pilot John Glenn – at a press conference, mirroring Walt’s zen “Pressure is a choice” outlook from Everybody Wants Some!! Powell plays John as supremely easy-going, such that when we finally see him sweat upon his fraught re-entry to Earth, the sense of danger is immediately intensified. Though he would go on to play similarly wholesome all-American heroes, Sand Castle (2017) instead channels the actor’s confidence into crude machismo and a streak of right-wing cruelty. Deployed to rural Iraq, the caged-animal energy of his Sergeant Chutsky is in stark contrast to Nicholas Hoult’s withdrawn fright as an army reservist. With a cheeky insouciance that can only come from having seen it all before, his dimpled grin is as near-permanent a fixture in the desert landscape as gunfire and explosions – for him, war is fun.
Powell’s warm smile stays put even in the face of his co-pilot’s (Jonathan Majors) initial stony reserve in Devotion (2022), based on the true story of Jesse Brown, the US Navy’s first Black aviator. As Lieutenant Tom Hudner, the actor borrows the bomber jacket, sunglasses and cocky strut of his more well-known Top Gun: Maverick (2022) role, but – in contrast to the unabashed optimistic Americana of Joseph Kosinski’s film – the nature of war comes with some sobering, sad realisations, chipping at his poise. By the end, grief sits heavy on Hudner’s shoulders. He still cracks a smile, but Powell doesn’t let it reach his eyes.
Contrast that with Top Gun: Maverick, in which Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin’s confidence is dialled up to arrogant smugness; he’s an outsized ego that stands out even in a sea of them. In his needling of Rooster (Miles Teller), Hangman employs the measured, grating tones of someone who knows exactly where to twist the knife. He punctuates his sentences with smirking nods for further obnoxiousness. In interviews, even Powell referred to Hangman as “dick garnish” and “Navy Draco Malfoy”. In the hands of a lesser actor, the lieutenant would be easy to hate, but exuding coolth and suaveness, alternating between good-natured ribbing and real malice, Powell makes him an onscreen presence compellingly easy to watch. When Maverick (Tom Cruise) proposes a particularly insane manœuvre and the camera pans to looks of disbelief on the other students’ faces, something novel flickers across Hangman’s: pure relish. And when he glides in to save the day when all hope seems lost, his cockiness is entirely justified.
Part of another franchise in which older characters ruminate on passing on the baton to a younger generation, Powell is the picture of confidence right from his Expendables 3 (2014) introductory scene – scaling a cliff Tom Cruise Mission Impossible-style, then one-upping him by paragliding off it. Of course his character Thorn is also an expert drone pilot. And a skilled hacker. His toothpick-chewing swagger elevates the otherwise clichéd characterisation and once again, it’s his calm know-how that saves the team. By the time Powell reunites with Linklater on their third collaboration, Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood (2022), he’s exactly the assured, reliable voice you need in your ear on a solo mission to the moon. It’s his NASA official who must sell the movie’s ludicrous premise – that the organisation accidentally built the lunar module too small and must find a child to pilot it – but he does it with such unassailable sass, it’s hard to argue.
One of Powell’s best roles subverts his unshakeable confidence by presenting it as straight-up delusion. In the slasher comedy series Scream Queens, his ridiculously named Chad Radwell is a riff on the entitled frat boy. This time, his smile captures a ‘no thoughts head empty’ bliss. He’s a himbo, delivering lines that clearly convey his stupidity with an exaggerated conviction in his intelligence. Powell’s comedic timing is impeccable, whether he’s responding to an insulting question about where he got his mommy issues from with a straight-faced, earnest “you know…probably my mom?” to his big plan to tackle the serial killer on campus – get “roided up” and roam around with a baseball bat.
Powell’s confident charisma is what makes him the ideal romantic lead – think of him swooping in like a knight in shining armour to rescue Sydney Sweeney’s damsel in distress at a coffee shop in Anyone But You (2023), pretending to be her husband without missing a beat. This film and Set It Up (2018), however, are Glen Powell romcoms that play with his confidence in smart ways, framing vulnerability as a far more interesting trait.
Powell’s Ben is so self-assured in Anyone But You that the script has to write weaknesses into his character, like a fear of flying, or being unable to swim. The film, however, eventually reveals that all that cocky posturing is a front – Ben’s snarky sniping at Bea (Sweeney) is a cover for his hurt at her leaving him. It’s only at the end that his confidence finally gives way to raw vulnerability, a crucial rom-com hero bit of character development.
As Charlie Young in Set It Up, the actor plays against type as a browbeaten assistant, shrunken inwards by his toxic workplace. There’s a whiff of desperation in how he approaches his relationship with his model girlfriend (Joan Smalls) who already has one foot out the door. He’s only confident when the power dynamic is in his favour, taking out his job frustrations by berating an intern or gleefully sniping at another assistant. As he meets Harper Moore (Zoey Deutch) and becomes more carefree, snark gradually becomes banter. And in the movie’s best scene – in which the two share a pizza – he visibly gulps at the realisation that he might be falling in love, a reflexively unguarded reaction before he slowly regains his composure.
“It’s not that I need people to root for you, but I need them to love watching you,” is what Cruise told Powell about approaching Hangman as they were prepping for Top Gun: Maverick. But it seems that the actor hardly needed the pep talk. Whether he’s leaning into his innate confidence – as in his next role as the charismatic storm-chasing streamer Tyler Owens in Twisters – or gently subverting it onscreen, it’s safe to say that Powell has long figured out how to have his cake and sell it to you too.
