11 things you probably didn't know about 'Twisters' actor Glen Powell

Powell was born and raised in Austin, but moved to LA at 19 to become an actor.

After Powell became a star, he returned to his hometown.

Powell told The Hollywood Reporter in May that he "earned the ability to go back to my family."

The outlet reported Powell has a place in Tribeca, New York, but his main residence is a house in Austin, 30 minutes from his parents. Powell sold his home in the Hollywood Hills.

Powell told THR that Matthew McConaughey advised him to leave LA.

"He's like, 'Hollywood is the Matrix, man. You plug in and it's all fake world,'" Powell said. "He's like, 'Then I go to Austin, and I unplug. It's all real. Those are my friends, that's my family, my actions matter there.' And he's right."

Like Troy Bolton in "High School Musical," Powell pursued theatre and sports as a child.

Powell played lacrosse, football, and basketball in high school. He also learned to tap dance and performed with the Broadway Texas Players, an award-winning performance troupe, from 1999 to 2003.

Powell told Ringer that his first job in LA was as a football, lacrosse, and basketball coach for the son of a wealthy Bel Air family.

"I was kind of like a manny. I lived in this amazing house. The family was amazing. They had a private chef. And all I had to do was coach the sports that I grew up playing," he said.

Powell is pretty close with his family: his parents, Glen Sr. and Cyndy; his older sister, Lauren Powell Whatton, and her twins Witt and Gwen; and his younger sister, Leslie.

Powell's parents received attention recently after they joined him on the red carpet for "Hit Man" and "Twisters."

But Glen Sr. and Cyndy have also appeared in most of his movies.

Last December, Powell told "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" that his parents "have had a cameo in basically every single movie I've done at this point."

This includes "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over," "Jack & Bobby," "Marge the Lunch Lady," "Everybody Wants Some!!" and "Twisters." When Powell starred in 2016's "Hidden Figures," Powell's mother and sister, Leslie, made a cameo.

Powell told THR in May that at least one member of his family visits him on every project that he works on, which is likely how they end up in all of his movies.

Powell has been acting since childhood, making his debut on "Spy Kids 3D: Game Over."

But Powell started to pursue acting as a career after he was cast in Denzel Washington's 2007 movie "The Great Debaters." Washington and his agent Ed Limato thought Powell could be a great actor and persuaded him to move to LA.

Before he died in 2010, Limato represented many well-known stars, including Robert Downey Jr., Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Sylvester Stallone.

Powell told Haute Living in 2016: "Denzel and Ed were the ones that kind of held my hand and said, 'I think you should actually give this thing a shot. I don't think it's as much of a pipe dream as you're making it out to be.'"

Powell told Ringer that Limato compared him to a young Richard Gere, the award-winning star of films including "Pretty Woman," "American Gigolo," and "Runaway Bride."

Limato became Powell's agent after he took his advice to move to LA.

Powell told THR that he was dropped by Limato's agency and struggled to find roles after he died in 2010.

"That was my lifeline, the guy who believed in me, and because he stood out in front of me, everyone in town would be like, 'Ed's rarely wrong, maybe there's something we're not seeing,'" Powell said. "And it was almost like once he passed away, the jig was up."

Before he passed, Limato organized an internship for Powell with producer Lynda Obst, who produced classic movies including "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," "Sleepless in Seattle," and "Flashdance."

Powell eventually got a full-time job providing feedback to Obst on scripts that she received.

Powell told Vogue in December 2023 that he learned about how Hollywood works and what makes a good rom-com script as a script reader.

"I really got a chance to understand how she saw the genre and to get a world-class education in producing," Powell said. "One thing that really defined Lynda is her ability to make really compelling, awesome rom-coms. As a script reader for her, I had the real benefit of reading several rom-coms a day for submissions."

Powell has now starred in a number of rom-coms in his career, including "Set It Up" and "Anyone But You."

Before starting his acting career, Powell enrolled at the University of Texas in Austin. But he only lasted a year before dropping out to go to LA.

Powell told Indiewire on Tuesday that he'll be studying to finish his degree in the fall while shooting his next movie, "The Running Man," in London.

"And I'm obviously going to be coming in, Zooming in for classes and whatnot, but I have to be back for the proctored exams," Powell said. "So, we're figuring that out for two or three times a semester, I'll come back for all my stuff."

Powell added that the movie's director, Edgar Wright, has been "very nice" about allowing him to finish the degree.

Earlier in Powell's career, he lost out on multiple leading roles, including Han Solo in 2018's "Solo: A Star Wars Story" and Captain America.

Powell told Men's Health in 2022 that he also auditioned to play Rooster in the 2022 blockbuster "Top Gun: Maverick," after spending months learning how to live like a pilot and spending time on an Air Force Base in Edwards, California.

Miles Teller got the role, but Tom Cruise, the movie's star, and Joe Kosinski, the director, were impressed by Powell and offered him the role of Hangman.

Initially, Powell turned down the character, telling multiple outlets in the past that he didn't like the original Hangman and thought the character wouldn't add anything to the movie.

But Cruise and Kosinski still wanted Powell to be in the movie, so they rewrote the role based on his suggestions.

"I said my piece to Tom about what I do and what I do well, and he listened. Tom's a listener. He listens to the crew members, he listens to his collaborators, and he hears people," Powell told GQ in May.

Since then, Cruise has been a close friend and mentor to Powell.

Due to production delays and the COVID-19 pandemic, "Top Gun: Maverick" was delayed from 2019 to 2022.

Powell told THR in May that he nearly went broke during this waiting period.

"I'd never made any significant amount of money on a movie, including 'Top Gun,' and I was depleting a bank account to a point where my accountant was like, 'This pandemic cannot last much longer,'" Powell said.

But it was worth the wait. According to Box Office Mojo, the film was a huge commercial success, raising $1.495 billion worldwide. It also boosted Powell's profile, which likely gave him the opportunities that made him the leading star he is today.

Powell told Men's Journal in 2022 that the "Top Gun: Maverick" cast was taught how to fly multiple planes, including the Cessna and the F-18.

But Powell went one step further and actually got his pilot's license after filming had finished.

In 2020, Powell announced in an Instagram post that he had got the license. In the caption, he said Cruise, who is a licensed pilot, paid for his flight school.

In April 2023, a meme spawned after a user on X compared an image of Powell smiling on a "Hidden Figures" red carpet in 2016 to a capybara.

Powell wasn't completely convinced.

In December, during an appearance on Wired's "Web's Most Searched Questions" YouTube series, Powell said: "This has gotten outta hand."

But he seems to have embraced the meme. When he appeared on the "Hot One Versus" YouTube series on Monday, Powell said he would choose to be a capybara if he could be any animal.

Fans have become obsessed with Powell's adopted terrier-poodle-mix dog, Brisket.

Powell told Entertainment Weekly on Monday that he adopted Brisket from the Labelle Foundation last year while filming "Twisters."

"I was going through a breakup at the time and was in the middle of Enid, Oklahoma, and I had always wanted a dog," Powell said. "It was something I thought about a lot, but it was somewhere in this coffee shop in Enid.... I don't even know how to describe it, I just had the desire to be a father."

Powell first shared the news of the adoption on Instagram in July 2023.

Since then, Brisket has joined Powell on set and recent press tours.

But before Brisket was in the picture, Powell had a pet monkey called Charlie.

Powell told Interview Magazine in 2016 that Charlie lived with his family in Austin and was "the most spoiled pet you can imagine."

Powell said Charlie was named after the viral video "Charlie bit my finger" because the monkey was a biter.