By Elisa Leonelli
June 26, 2024
Glen Powell, 35, stood out as one of the pilots trained by Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), but lately his popularity has exploded to such an extent that the Hollywood Reporter puts him on the cover on May 22, Vanity Fair cites him as the second box office actor after Timothée Chalamet (Dune), the New York Times emphasizes his macho appeal in comparison to the androgynous one of younger actors like Chalamet and Tom Holland (Spider-Man). It was launched by the box office success of the romantic sex comedy Anyone But You, inspired by Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, alongside the equally hot new diva Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria).
Elisa Leonelli interviews Powell in Los Angeles for Voilà about the film Hit Man, presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2023 and released in Italy on June 27.
Glen Powell had already acted in the Richard Linklater film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), for Hit Man he also wrote the script and produced the film with his friend Linklater, a Texan from Austin like him.
“During the pandemic, I happened to read in Texas Monthly this 2001 article by Skip Hollingsworth called Hit Man, about the life of the real Gary Johnson, a psychology professor, ornithologist and Zen Buddhist, who had a side job for the police, as a fake hired killer.
“He was nicknamed Laurence Olivier, because he changed different personalities and disguises, to correspond to the idea of a murderer in the eyes of those who wanted to hire him to kill their wife or husband or business partner. It was very clear that this was a compelling character, so I sent the article to Rick, who replied that he had read it when I was in sixth grade.”
Powell reveals that the love story between her character and Adria Arjona, in the role of a woman who asks him to kill her husband, was invented for the film, but allows you to explore various cinematic genres, from thriller to erotic comedy.
“With her I get stuck in my identity as a killer, I have to wear the mask of a dangerous, charming and sexy guy, and eventually the shy professor realizes that we all have the power to change our personality, and he starts teaching that to his students.”
Powell co-stars with Daisy Edgar Jones (Normal People) in Twisters about hurricane hunters in Oklahoma, which will released in cinemas on July 17 after its premiere at the Taormina Festival.
You may have seen Glen Powell in The Great Debaters (2007) directed by Denzel Washington, as astronaut John Glenn in Hidden Figures (2016) starring Taraji Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe, in Set It Up (2018) starring Zoey Deutch and Lucy Liu, in the TV series Scream Queens (2016-2017) starring Emma Roberts and Jamie Lee Curtis.