With his square jaw and symmetrical smile, his seemingly endless charisma, and his genuine acting chops, it’s no wonder that Glen Powell is knocking on the A-list door in Hollywood. He’s been having a real moment over the past few years, but the Austin, Texas native is no bright-eyed newcomer to Tinseltown. Like most people who make it in Hollywood, he paid his dues: Before his turn as Hangman in “Top Gun: Maverick” put him on the map, he did the grind as an intern for a renowned producer and took any role that came his way, no matter the size.

Powell’s persistence paid off big time. He followed in the footsteps of another famous Texan actor in Matthew McConaughey, making a name for himself in romantic comedies while also reminding everyone that he’s more than a one trick pony with roles in serious projects like the hit biopic “Hidden Figures” and the war drama “Sand Castle.” If you want to know more about Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, you’re in the right place. Here are a dozen little-known facts about Glen Powell.

Glen Powell has an impressive filmography. On top of “Top Gun: Maverick,” he’s been in the likes of “Anyone But You” and “Hidden Figures,” to name but a few. You would think that it would be tough for him to pick a favorite performance out of this ever-growing list, but Powell didn’t need to think too hard about this in a December 2023 interview with Vogue. As it turns out, he adores one specific film he was a part of in 2016.

“I think ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ will be my favorite movie I’ve ever made in my whole life,” he said. “There’s not going to be a more charmed, lovely experience. When that movie ended, I sobbed as I was shaving off my thin mustache.” Powell added that he loves making films where he gets an opportunity to be silly and self-deprecating, since it’s reminiscent of his family life and how he is on a personal level.

Written and directed by Richard Linklater, the teen comedy sees Powell portray the utterly hilarious Walt “Finn” Finnegan in a story set in 1980s Texas. While “Everybody Wants Some!!” failed to make a splash at the box office, only making $5.4 million from a $10 million budget, it proved to be a critical hit with an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Glen Powell plays the part of Jake “Hangman” Seresin so well that it’s almost impossible to think of anybody else in the role. However, that was almost the case, as Powell initially auditioned to play Rooster. Speaking to Variety in November 2022, Powell explained how he had a good feeling about landing the role of Rooster before director Joseph Kosinski delivered the news that Miles Teller had won the part. Disappointed but still trying to be upbeat about it, Powell posted a joke on X (formerly known as Twitter) about taking down the Tom Cruise posters on his bedroom wall. “Then the sadness hit the next day, so I’m really glad I got that tweet out before that,” Powell said.

The universe must have a good sense of humor, though, since Powell’s fortunes soon changed — out of the blue, he received an offer to play Hangman, instead. “Then the experience of Tom Cruise calling me and pitching me this whole other thing and the back and forth with him and Jerry Bruckheimer and Joe Kosinski and Chris McQuarrie happened,” he said, adding that perhaps they saw his tweet and decided to give him the Hangman role. “You never know! In hindsight it’s weird when you think back on what little things you were unaware of if that changed the course of your life.”

After “Anyone But You” blew everyone away at the box office, execs must have been over the moon. It could have been a very different story, though, after a real-life incident almost turned tragic. The majority of the story takes place in Sydney, Australia. During a filming day, Glen Powell and others were transported in a helicopter ride above Sydney Harbour. The flight took a nervous turn when the helicopter experienced a malfunction soaring above the water.

“The helicopter had serious mechanical issues, and we had to emergency land in a field nearby,” Glen Powell explained to Rolling Stone. “If we crashed, we would’ve been history. There would’ve been nothing left of us.” Hilariously, he added: “I didn’t survive ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ only to die in a rom-com.” As if the idea of crashing alone wasn’t terrifying enough, the waters of Sydney Harbour can be filled with white sharks, tiger sharks, and bull sharks at various times of the year, though shark attacks here are thankfully quite rare.

Back when he was still climbing up the ranks in Hollywood, Glen Powell was given the opportunity to share the screen with an all-star cast of legends in 2014’s “The Expendables 3.” Powell played the hacker and drone pilot Thorn alongside powerhouse action heroes like Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, and Wesley Snipes. He even appeared on some of the film’s posters, standing right next to Snipes. However, not everyone was aware of Powell’s inclusion in the movie.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Powell recalled how he was at the Cannes Film Festival to celebrate the movie with the other cast members when he was forcefully evicted from a party. “It actually got kind of physical,” he said. “There was a large bouncer that was convinced that I shouldn’t be in the VIP section, so it kind of turned into a physical altercation where I got hit in the face at the ‘Expendables 3’ party because no one recognized me even though there was a banner in the party of my face.”

Before he became the next big thing in romantic comedies with “Anyone But You,” Glen Powell garnered somewhat of a cult status among rom-com fans thanks to Netflix’s 2018 film “Set It Up.” In the movie, he plays a guy named Charlie, an assistant who teams up with another assistant, Harper (Zoey Deutch), to orchestrate a romance between their bosses in an effort to lighten their own workloads. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Charlie and Harper end up falling in love. You can see it coming a mile off, but it’s still sweet to watch their relationship develop.

To prepare for the part, Powell decided to take a deep dive into the lives of real assistants. “For research for this movie, I went to my agency and I kind of treated all the assistants to lunch, and I just listened to them tell horrible-boss stories,” he told Vanity Fair. “Then I worked the phones for my agent for like, three days, and then I went to this venture-capitalist firm here in New York, just to see what that world was like.” Powell’s haircut in the film is also a result of the people he met during his research period, many of whom boasted this very ‘do. “I went to this V.C. firm, and every dude had the same haircut,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this haircut is horrible.'”

While Richard Linklater and Glen Powell might not be among the best director-actor pairs in movie history yet, their collaborations so far have proven to be entertaining. In 2023, the Texan pair teamed up for the critically acclaimed action-comedy “Hit Man,” which Linklater directed, co-produced, and co-wrote with Powell. The film sees Powell portray the role of college professor Gary Johnson, who becomes an undercover operative and poses as a fake hit man. The script is based on a bizarre true story that the actor read about in “Texas Monthly” and sent to Linklater.

“This was a COVID baby of ours, and it wasn’t like we set out to make a movie,” Powell told Rolling Stone. “But any conversation with Richard Linklater is going to lead to something profound, I’ve found.” With the world shut down and everyone else making banana bread and binging “Tiger King,” they had time on their hands. So, the pair bounced around ideas, trying to think of how to turn it into a story that would work well on the big screen. “This movie, it’s like his brain and my brain completely melded together,” Powell added. “I think it utilizes what makes him special as a director to its fullest.”