Glen Powell’s 10 favourite movies
Rather like ladybirds, economic strife and union jack flags, Glen Powell is absolutely everywhere at the moment, and if you look up the word ‘ubiquitous’ on Google, you will probably see a photo of him looking back at you, all perfect teeth and squared-off jaw and sparkly come-to-bed eyes, the complete bastard.
If you weren’t sick of his perfect physique already, then things are about to get a lot worse as Edgar Wright’s reboot of The Running Man hits cinemas next month starring Powell, as well as a new sports-based comedy on Disney+ called Chad Powers arriving to streaming this week, a role for which the Texan is getting some considerable acclaim.
With several more projects coming up for Powell, including a rumoured Evil Knievel movie, a Texas Chainsaw Massacre TV series and a new film with JJ Abrams, it seems we are just at the beginning of our ‘turn on the TV and there he is’ phase where Powell is concerned.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. His work on the god awful Twisters notwithstanding, Powell has shown with the likes of Richard Linklater’s Hit Man that he is more than just a pretty face, and a look at his top ten movies of all time shows a deep understanding of the medium, as well as a prediliction for sports films and Mrs Doubtfire, both of which feed into Chad Powers, which means he knows exactly what he’s doing in interviews.
Speaking to Letterboxd while doing some promo for the show, he picked an initial top four, kicking off with the 1993 transvestite comedy, saying: “Robin Williams was such a sensational actor. He could do it all.”
Next up he picked classic sports movie Rudy from the same year, starring The Lord of the Rings’ Sean Astin and Jon Favreau, plus Kevin Costner’s baseball film Bull Durham and 1998’s big-budget disaster movie Armageddon starring Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, saying: “Within this show we have a few references, because like Armageddon we are taking an absolutely ridiculous premise and we’re trying to ground it as much as humanly possible and make it a reality.”
Elsewhere, Powell told A-Frame about some more of his faves, including the all-time great romance Casablanca from 1942, saying: “It’s such an interesting thing, because Humphrey Bogart’s character is so flawed, right? He is so flawed. And Casablanca is one of those movies that, on a whole, it shouldn’t really work. But it does! I’m such a fan of that movie”.
He also went with another true great of cinema in the shape of Singin’ in the Rain, the musical comedy that featured Gene Kelly splashing about in puddles, twirling an umbrella in possibly the most famous scene in cinema history.
Powell is a big fan, stating: “Singin’ in the Rain is a near-perfect movie, for me. It captures such an interesting era of movies, and I’m obsessed with Hollywood. I love Hollywood”.
Starring the late Robert Redford and Paul Newman, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is another film that makes the cut for Powell, the 1969 western that united two of the most in-demand and lusted-after men in the world at the time. Says Powell: “A very revolutionary movie for its time. In terms of the romantic element, it follows none of the rules, and the way they shot it, and the music they use”.
Glen Powell’s 10 favourite movies:
- Mrs. Doubtfire (Chris Columbus, 1993)
- Rudy (David Anspaugh, 1993)
- Bull Durham (Ron Shelton, 1988)
- Armageddon (Michael Bay, 1998)
- Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen, 1952)
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969)
- Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
- Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982)
- Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989)
