The thriller “The Heirloom Hunter” has been released in Ukrainian cinemas, starring Glen Powell, the star of the films “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) and “The Running Man” (2025). In Hollywood, Glen Powell has the role of an actor who is guaranteed to provide high box office receipts. We tell you the most interesting things about the actor.
Pavel's new film – the daring black comedy thriller “The Heirloom Hunter”, which opens in Ukrainian cinemas on March 12 – should only consolidate this star status of the actor. We tell you about the career of this actor who is sincerely in love with cinema, who waited a long time for reciprocity from Hollywood, but finally waited.
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“You can try to break down every door possible”
In 2003, 18-year-old Powell made his film debut in Spy Kids 3D: Game Over. And in 2007, just before his freshman year of college, Powell got a role in the film The Great Arguers, directed and starring Denzel Washington. Washington introduced Glen to agent Ed Limato, who advised Powell to move to Los Angeles. However, a quick breakthrough did not happen. Glen went to castings and went to castings – and although he got quite a few episodic roles in TV series, he was rejected after rejected for serious work.
“When you don’t have anyone to support you, you feel like you’re floating free,” the actor recalls of that time. He tried everything: he would look through casting lists every day, film unsolicited auditions, look up casting directors’ contact information, and ask a friend who worked in sales to call them on his behalf. “I thought, ‘This city is going to throw me out anyway. So I might as well try to knock down every door I can,’” he explains of his strategy.
In the way of Thor and Star-Lord, but in his own way
Powell began to receive larger roles in feature films around 2014. According to him, the main turning point for this was the breakthrough of Chris Pratt, an actor of a similar type. In 2014, “Guardians of the Galaxy” with Pratt changed the image of the main character of blockbusters: narcissism, pathos and seriousness were a thing of the past, giving way to the absurd vulnerability of Star-Lord performed by Pratt. In parallel, another conditionally similar actor was following a similar path – Chris Hemsworth, who sincerely had fun in the image of Marvel's Thor. And it was this type of guy – muscular and handsome, but with a certain amount of stupidity – that everyone suddenly needed!
“These guys can both cut and get in the face, and they can make a good joke,” Powell says of the character he finally managed to fit into. “I think that's when I finally felt the ground beneath my feet.”
However, having felt this ground, Powell took a completely different path than Pratt and Hemsworth: Glen has not yet starred in any superhero films, although his physical data seems to be made for them. In fact, it seems that the actor aspires to be the embodiment of the return to the action stars of the 1990s much more than putting on a cape and a leotard. He begins to choose roles that never let the viewer forget that he is not another physical film incarnation of some comic book character, but Glen Powell. His choice is the roles of the benefit: supporting roles of the level of Harrison Ford, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, whose name was always written above the title of the film.
Glen Powell has a glamorous look, but he's always happy to get his hands dirty. He can play cowboys, lovelorn heroes, and action-adventure heroes, and he appeals to both men and women. He's classically handsome, manly, and a true Texan. But at the same time, along with that toughness, Powell has a certain good-natured goofiness that balances out his alpha-male qualities—which makes him a bit like Ryan Gosling, another conventional action-movie hunk who's never been afraid to look like a fool or a naive simpleton.
Perhaps it is this ease that most distinguishes Pavel from his colleagues: a comfort in his own body and complete self-confidence in any circumstances, which appeared due to the fact that he had to wait for fame to come.
Big Breakthrough: “Top Gun: Maverick,” “The Running Man,” and “The Heirloom Hunter”
After years of anticipation, Powell's rise to stardom was swift, like the takeoff of a military fighter jet in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), where Glenn played a supporting role alongside Tom Cruise. Top Gun: Maverick became the biggest hit of 2022, riding a wave of '80s nostalgia and perhaps an audience's desire to see heroes who feel genuinely human, even when performing absurd aerial stunts. Powell's semi-negative role—Lieutenant Jay “The Hangman” Ceresin—was relatively small, but his confident, ironic delivery and cheeky smile caught the attention of audiences.
“Top Gun: Maverick” almost became one of those dreams that slipped away from Powell. The actor initially auditioned for the role of the second lead, Rooster, but lost out to Miles Teller. “I got a call from director Joe Kosinski and he said I wasn't cast. I remember that same familiar, depressing feeling,” Powell recalls. But both Kosinski and Tom Cruise, who was the film's star and producer, liked Powell and wanted to adapt the role of The Hangman for him. At first, Powell wasn't interested.
After “Top Gun”, high-profile projects followed literally one after another: the rom-com “Love to Hate You” (2023), the black rom-com “Hitman” (2023), the disaster film “Tornadoes” (2024), the action-distopia based on Stephen King's “The Running Man” (2025), and now “The Heirloom Hunter”, which promises to be a real gift for fans of black comedy thrillers.
“The Heirloom Hunter” is a kind of remake of the 1949 film “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, which is included in the top 100 best films in history according to Time magazine. Inspired by “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, director and screenwriter John Patton Ford (“Emily the Criminal”) wrote his own version of this story, moving the events to the present day, renaming the main character and reducing the number of his potential victims from eight to seven. What victims are we talking about? The main character of the film, Beckett Redfellow, who is actually played by Glen Powell, intends to return the family fortune of $ 28 billion, which was denied to him by his mother. However, between him and the dream inheritance stand seven arrogant and spoiled rich relatives who are not even aware of the existence of another potential heir…
Now that Glen Powell is finally back on the big screen at 37, he has a lot of experience under his belt. He's played enough small roles since he was a teenager that his satisfaction with getting a lead role is palpable, but it doesn't translate into an overly-pleasing effort to please anyone. The actor has finally found his niche, his audience, and, perhaps, himself.
And whether he will find an additional $28 billion – we will find out in the cinema on March 12, when “The Inheritance Hunter” will be released in Ukrainian cinemas.