Glen Powell remains ‘grateful’ for small ‘Dark Knight Rises’ role

Before he was Top Gun: Maverick‘s Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin or celebrity storm chaser Tyler Owens in Twisters, Glen Powell played a character so small that he didn’t even have a name in Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan’s 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises. And he’s damn proud of it.

“Even though it was a small role, I auditioned several times for it,” he told Vanity Fair in an interview published Wednesday. “I was getting to work with the greatest director on the planet, Christopher Nolan. And you’re sitting there and all of a sudden Tom Hardy walks in as Bane. It’s electric. It’s sort of out-of-body. That was one of those movies when nothing was going on in my life. I was just fighting for every inch. And when Christopher Nolan casts you in his movie, it’s a validation that’s hard to explain. And I’ve talked to Chris about this. We’ve run into each other at different things. I saw him during his amazing Oppenheimer run, and he’s very proud that he plucked me early. I’m just very grateful that he took a shot.”

Powell had spent about a decade before that playing small parts that also didn’t have a name in movies like The Great Debaters and TV shows including Without a Trace and CSI: Miami. By 2016, he became known for the retro, college baseball comedy Everybody Wants Some!! (directed by Oscar nominee Richard Linklater). Powell played upper-classman Finnegan, not “pitcher No. 2” or anything of the sort.

He’s such a big star nowadays that this week he was asked about rumors he would replace his Maverick costar Tom Cruise in the action-packed Mission: Impossible franchise. Powell’s answer was a flat-out no, because of the dangerous stunts involved.

“My mom would never let me do that,” he said.

But even more than a decade after working with Nolan, Powell can still see his time with him clearly.

“I remember everything. You never forget the feeling,” Powell said. “It’s something I carry to every set I walk on now, which is just the reverence for being on a set in general. But I remember on Dark Knight Rises the feeling of being able to walk onto a set and you knew everybody in the world wanted to be on that set, right?”

Powell’s upcoming projects include next year’s The Running Man, a remake of the 1987 dystopian, action film based on the Stephen King novel. Directed by Edgar Wright, the film’s cast includes Josh Brolin, William H. Macy, Michael Cera, and Lee Pace.

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