Glen Powell is everywhere these days, including the latest cover of Esquire , where he’s promoting of slew of new movies, including one that nearly cost him his hand and left him “broken, physically and emotionally.”
Here are some of our favorite excerpts from Madison Vain’s expansive profile of Hollywood’s reigning action king.
Powell and Randolph first caught the attention of gossip hounds in the fall of 2025; it’s a recipe that Powell says just works. “Life is fast for both of us,” he says, “and we have the same values. She loves her family. I love my family. And we both care about work a lot. We both like to show up for our partners. And yet we also understand the balance of it all.” Hollywood is not exactly known for launching healthy, long-lasting relationships. The schedules, the inherent competition, the way social media lets the public sneak between two people with unsolicited opinions. It’s all a mindf*ck. For Powell, his relationship with Randolph is the antidote. “There’s something so lovely,” he says, “about someone rooting for you. Someone who wants you to win in all the ways that are good for you as a human. Not just professionally but in all the ways that are good for your soul.”
“I probably know as much as you do,” he says. This is, of course, bullsht. Powell speaks to Tom Cruise regularly; Cruise has become a mentor and a safe space for him in this industry. Cruise tends, Powell says, to have a sixth sense and gives him a call when he knows he needs it most. They spoke last week by phone and recently had dinner in London. So, like I said, bullsht . Powell laughs. “I know general brushstrokes of a story,” he admits. “I haven’t read anything.” He’s spoken to both “TC and Jerry”—as in Bruckheimer—but, he cautions, “Tom’s not going to do it unless he thinks it can beat Maverick .” A tall order indeed. “Hopefully I’m not the age of Maverick in Maverick by the time I make it.”
The thing is, Tom Cruise doesn’t really like hearing that word, and after a frank conversation with Powell in a studio conference room several months later, Cruise promised he’d elevate the character to something worth doing. The ask was simple: Trust me. Powell agreed. Filming took a year, and then the edit took another. By the time the film was ready, Covid was raging and theaters were closed. The studio told Cruise to release it for at-home viewing, and now it was Cruise’s turn to decline. He wanted to wait. That delay tested every individual strand of Powell’s patience. “You’re just waiting for your life to change,” he explains. It did. Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of Maverick but also so many other movies you love, like Armageddon , Bad Boys , and Pirates of the Caribbean , says he had fun ribbing Powell after the film’s release: “I said to him, ‘How would you feel right now if you had turned down the part?’”
Powell ruptured a tendon in his hand, except he didn’t know he ruptured a tendon and was instead hyperfocused on not delaying production. “ Running Man had a release date, and I had the J. J. Abrams movie on deck,” he says by way of explanation. But the pain worsened and his hand began to swell and swell. Soon Powell found himself in a Bulgarian emergency room, where he learned not only that the tissue had been severed completely but also that he had a septic infection. “This is the real deal,” the doctors cautioned. Powell needed surgery right away, and before he was put under, the attendings gave him a wa…