Glen Powell is a certified movie star after back-to-back box office hits, but he still remembers when TV guest appearances were how he paid the bills.
“The business no longer supports struggling actors the way it did when I was kind of coming up,” Powell, 36, revealed during an interview with Vanity Fair for its Hollywood 2025 Issue, published on Wednesday, November 13.
The actor recalled, “I would do an episode of NCIS, and that would keep me afloat for a year. You know what I mean?”
Powell was in his 20s when he had a guest star role on NCIS in 2012. He played Marine sergeant Evan Westcott during two episodes during season 10 titled “Shell Shock Part I” and “Shell Shock Part II.”
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While Powell didn’t reveal how much he earned for the two-story arc, he said it was enough to survive in Hollywood while cutting costs in his personal life.
“My overhead’s not high. You’re not living a lavish lifestyle. You’re hiding a flask in your boot if you go out for a drink,” he said of that time period. “You’re not necessarily able to afford anything significant in that town, but you are able to stay there. Those little jobs, like getting a commercial, keep life in the system.”
Powell broke into the entertainment industry in 2003 with a small part in Spy Kids 3: Game Over. During the next decade, he had guest starring roles on Jack & Bobby, Without a Trace, CSI: Miami, Rizzoli & Isles and NCIS in addition to parts in a few shorts and other films.
“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,” Powell said. “It makes you oppressively self-aware. Where people can get caught in a rut is where they just want to continue spinning the roulette wheel without any thought of why. They just stay at the table for no reason other than to stay at the table.”
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Powell circumvented the rut and in 2015 made his first real splash as an actor playing Chad Radwell on Scream Queens before appearing in Hidden Figures the following year.
“Even at the darkest moments in that town, when I really didn’t have anything happening, you sort of have to lie to yourself, at least a little bit, and act like this is that chapter of the story where things just aren’t going right,” the actor revealed. “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.”
His star continued to rise in 2018 when he starred in three feature films before his career exploded in 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick. The following year, Powell became a rom-com hunk starring in Anyone But You alongside Sydney Sweeney. He also played Gary Johnson in 2023’s Hit Man.
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This year, Twisters added to his box office hits and he voiced his first character on an episode of Family Guy. Come 2025, Powell is set to star on the TV show Chad Powers and appear in The Running Man. Despite being on top of the world now, Powell knows it could all turn on a dime.
“I’ve failed for a lot longer than I’ve succeeded,” he told the outlet. “I’ve really gotten a chance to see other people do it. And what I realized is, I think the trap is trying to fit into the mold of something like that where it’s inauthentic.”
That’s why with every new project, Powell said he asks, “What does the audience want to see? How can I fit into a role that really challenges what I do, where I’m not settling into any sort of groove that feels too familiar or too monotonous?”
He described his approach to his craft as thinking about the “audience first” rather than “me first.”
