It was reported earlier this week that Glen Powell, the handsome and charismatic (pick one or the other, buddy; it’s not fair to the rest of us to be both) star of Hit Man and Twisters, is Tom Cruise’s preferred choice to take over the spy franchise following 2025’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. When asked about the rumor on Tuesday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show, Powell replied, “My mom would never let me do that,” adding that the building-scaling job is “a death trap.”
Powell was kidding (he’s used the “mom” line before), but if he was indeed offered the gig and turned it down, he made the correct choice. He can be “the next Tom Cruise” without literally replacing Tom Cruise.
Tom Cruise’s breakthrough year came in 1986 (his 2024, so to speak), when he starred in both Top Gun and The Color of Money. Top Gun made him a movie star, but The Color of Money taught him how to be a movie star. The pool hustler drama with Paul Newman and Cruise was a passing of the torch from one generation of leading man to another, and Cruise was a willing student.
Back in 2021, Cruise shared the valuable advice he received from Newman while shooting the Martin Scorsese film. It’s long, so grab your popcorn.
“I was like, ‘I’m gonna have a leather jacket and t-shirt. I’m gonna have my hair blown back. It’s guaranteed up to 90 miles an hour. And there I am in January, and I’m shooting this scene. And I remember in the script, it was like outside. I didn’t think about it. Wardrobe’s like, ‘Yeah it looks great.’ And I am doing this scene, and I mean, I’m telling you, it’s so cold I can’t even speak. I’m in between takes, and [Newman] is in a car, and I’m running to this area. They’re trying to thaw [me]. Newman’s like, ‘Where’s the kid? Where’s the kid?’ So finally, I have this scene where he’s in the car, and I’m next to him. I look in, and I’m like, ‘What?’ He had the warm coat. He had the heater in there. It was an electric heater, OK? … He looked at me, and he’s like, ‘T-shirt? You tried your wardrobe on in the summer, didn’t you?’ I was like, ‘Yes, sir. I did.’ He’s like, ‘Watch and learn, kid. Watch and learn.’ I never forgot it. I literally never forgot it.”
Powell has been watching and learning from Cruise.
He watched how the four-time Oscar nominee handled himself to “make a big event movie.” He learned to care about his legacy. He watched and learned during a six-hour long “film school” video that Cruise screens only for select friends and covers everything from the difference between a film camera and a digital camera and how air pressure works. (I need to see this almost as much as I need to eat the Tom Cruise cake.)
Powell is an eager protégé learning from a master, and he’s putting together an impressive (and superhero-free!) filmography. His charming early performances in Everybody Wants Some!! and Hidden Figures put him on the radar; he capitalized on that buzz with Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, followed by Anyone But You in 2023 and Hit Man and Twisters in 2024. His upcoming slate is promising, too.
Powell, like Cruise going from teen classic Risky Business to fantasy epic Legend to four-quadrant blockbuster Top Gun to Oscar player The Color of Money early in his career, is aware of the dangers of pigeonholing himself into one genre. “I’m trying to do ambitious things that scare me a little bit, because when they scare you, it means that you have to rise to the occasion,” he told Vanity Fair. The only way that quote could have been more Tom Cruise-y is if it ended with him jumping out of a plane.
The idea of a movie star has changed a lot since Glen Powell was Cruise’s age. It’s the intellectual properties that are the draw now. But that’s seemingly beginning to change with exciting young actors like Zendaya, Jenna Ortega, Timothée Chalamet, Rachel Zegler, and, perhaps most of all, Powell. He has the talent, looks, and charisma to have a successful career. But Powell is aiming higher than that. He wants to be an old fashioned Movie Star, or as he told Tom Cruise when he was cast in Top Gun: Maverick, “I’m working to try to be you.” It’s a mission that, with Cruise’s help, doesn’t seem so impossible.