Top 13 Glen Powell Movies, Ranked

There’s a specific moment in Top Gun: Maverick where Hangman flashes that grin across the briefing room and you realize this guy was born to be a movie star. Glen Powell has been quietly building toward that moment for over a decade, and the TV Hulk team has ranked his filmography by the performances themselves: how convincing he was in the role, how much the character stuck with us after the credits rolled, and how fully he committed to whatever the movie was asking of him. From a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it debut to a billion-dollar blockbuster, here are his 13 best films, ranked.

13. Sand Castle (2017)

Sergeant Chutu is a small role in a film that never quite figured out what it wanted to be, but Powell brings a grounded, no-frills presence to this Netflix Iraq War drama that’s worth acknowledging. Sharing the screen with Henry Cavill, he plays Chutu with a quiet, watchful energy — the kind of soldier who doesn’t need to announce himself in every scene. There’s a moment during a tense village standoff where Powell holds the frame with real stillness: no big speeches, just a guy doing his job under pressure. It’s a modest entry, but working in a grittier register this early in his career gave him something to draw on later.

12. The Great Debaters (2007)

The Harvard Debater is barely a role at all, but this film belongs on the list because of what happened off screen. Denzel Washington, directing and starring, spotted Powell at the table read, and that early exposure to such a high-caliber production helped set his career in motion. That experience is the reason any of the other entries on this list exist. On screen, Glen is composed and credible in a brief appearance that required him to hold his own opposite a room full of seasoned actors, and he did. Sometimes the most important performance of a career is the one that convinces the right person you belong in the room.

11. Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022)

Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped love letter to late-1960s Houston is a film that lives and dies by its voice performances, and Powell’s work as Bostick fits comfortably into that world. His delivery has a breezy, sun-baked confidence that suits the film’s nostalgic register, and you can hear him leaning into the period’s particular brand of can-do optimism without pushing it into parody. It’s a supporting part in an ensemble piece, and Glen keeps his contribution appropriately light, letting the film’s dreamy, memory-soaked tone do the heavy lifting. The real value here is what it reveals about his ongoing creative relationship with Linklater — a partnership that would eventually produce something far more ambitious.

10. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

Mark Reynolds is about as far from Powell’s comfort zone as you can get: a polished American publisher navigating the genteel world of a British period romance, competing for Lily James’s attention against the emotional gravity of postwar Guernsey. Powell plays him with a smooth, slightly oblivious charm that works precisely because Mark is never quite the right fit for the story he’s wandered into. There’s a scene where he presents Juliet with a lavish New York lifestyle she clearly doesn’t want, and Glen plays the moment with just enough self-awareness to keep Mark sympathetic rather than simply obtuse. It doesn’t get cited much, but it’s a genuinely interesting piece of casting that he handles well.

9. The Expendables 3 (2014)

Thorn is a hacker with a mohawk dropped into a film full of action legends, and Powell’s job was essentially to not get swallowed whole by the combined screen presence of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Statham, and Mel Gibson. He doesn’t, which is the whole point. There’s an early recruitment sequence where the new-generation team gets assembled, and Glen carries himself with enough physical confidence and quick energy that he reads as a credible addition rather than a token young face. The film itself landed with a thud critically, but getting cast in that company at that stage of his career said something about how he was being perceived in the industry.

8. Set It Up (2018)

Charlie Young is a frazzled, overworked assistant who hatches a scheme to set up his terrifying boss with his co-conspirator’s equally terrifying boss, and Powell plays the whole thing with a loose, self-deprecating warmth that made a lot of people do a double take. This Netflix rom-com became a genuine word-of-mouth hit in the summer of 2018, and Charlie’s appeal was a big reason why. There’s a running bit where he keeps getting caught in increasingly awkward situations with his boss, and Powell’s physical comedy in those moments, the flustered scrambling and the too-wide smile, is sharper than the film probably needed it to be. For a lot of viewers, this was the first time they thought: okay, this guy has something.

7. Devotion (2022)

Tom Hudner asks very different things of Powell than most of his roles do. The real-life Medal of Honor recipient was a man defined by loyalty and restraint, and Glen plays him with a quiet, almost deliberate sincerity that keeps the film grounded. The scene where Hudner deliberately crash-lands his plane in enemy territory to stay with his downed wingman Jesse Brown is the emotional center of the whole movie, and Powell plays it without any heroic posturing; he just looks like a man doing the only thing he could imagine doing. Sandwiched between Top Gun: Maverick and Hit Man in his filmography, Devotion is the entry that suggests there’s more dramatic range here than the blockbuster work typically gets to use.

6. Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

Finnegan is the blueprint. Watch this Linklater ensemble piece and you can see exactly where Hangman came from: the easy grin, the competitive edge wrapped in good-time energy, the way Powell makes a guy who’s slightly too confident somehow completely likable anyway. In a film full of charismatic performances, Finnegan stands out in the pickup baseball scenes, where Glen plays the character’s need to win as something almost philosophical rather than just jock posturing. Linklater’s “spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused” earned strong critical love, and Powell’s contribution is a big part of why the film’s ensemble feels so alive. Cult fans have been pointing at this performance for years as proof they saw it coming.

5. Hidden Figures (2016)

John Glenn shows up in Hidden Figures as a figure of genuine decency, and Powell plays him with a warmth that earns the character’s most important moment. When Glenn refuses to launch until Katherine Johnson personally verifies the computer calculations, insisting on “the girl,” Powell makes it land not as a grand gesture but as something simple and human: a man who trusts what he can see. The film earned widespread critical acclaim, and Powell’s work as Glenn is a real part of why the ensemble functions so well. It was his first real taste of prestige Hollywood, and he didn’t waste the opportunity.

4. Anyone But You (2023)

Ben and Bea hate each other, then they don’t, and the entire film rests on whether you buy Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney as two people who can’t stay away from each other. You absolutely do. Powell plays Ben with a sun-drenched, effortless ease that makes the character’s romantic frustration land as funny rather than contrived, and his physical comedy during the fake-relationship sequences in Sydney, Australia, is some of the most charming work he’s done. The film was a massive box office hit and became a cultural talking point about whether the studio rom-com was back. The answer, largely because of Glen’s chemistry with Sweeney and his complete commitment to the bit, was yes.

3. Twisters (2024)

Tyler Owens arrives on screen in a rodeo arena, and Powell plays him like a man who has never once doubted that the crowd came specifically to see him. The character is part storm-chasing adrenaline junkie, part social media showman, and Glen leans into every bit of it without letting Tyler tip over into self-parody. The scene where he and Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) are caught in the middle of a chaotic storm sequence, chaos erupting all around them with Tyler still grinning like this is the best day of his life, is Powell at his most purely entertaining. The film was a genuine box office hit, and audiences responded to Tyler the way they respond to characters they want to spend more time with.

2. Hit Man (2023)

Gary Johnson is a mild-mannered psychology professor who moonlights as a fake hitman for the New Orleans police department, and the performance Powell builds around that premise catches you off guard at every turn. He co-wrote the script with Linklater and produced the film, meaning the shapeshifting nature of Gary, the way he cycles through undercover personas with different accents, body language, and energy, was a deliberate creative choice. There’s a scene midway through where Gary adopts a whole new identity to pursue a romantic connection he knows he shouldn’t, and Glen plays the character’s self-deception with a lightness that makes it funny and a little heartbreaking at the same time. The performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, his first major individual recognition, and it’s easy to see why.

1. Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Hangman is the character that changed everything. Lieutenant Jake Seresin exists in Top Gun: Maverick to be the pilot you’re not sure about, the guy whose ego might get someone killed, and Powell plays that tension with a grin so perfectly calibrated it’s almost a weapon. He’s in the film less than you remember, which is part of what makes it work: every scene Hangman appears in has a charge to it, and Glen never wastes one. His crucial actions in the film’s climax land as hard as they do because Powell has spent the whole movie keeping you in real doubt about whether Hangman would do it. Top Gun: Maverick grossed $1.5 billion worldwide and became a cultural event, and Powell’s performance was a significant reason audiences left the theater talking. He walked in as a supporting player and walked out a movie star.

Glen Powell’s career is a slow build that suddenly became a sprint. Going back through his filmography, what stands out is how consistent the instincts were even in the early work: the ease, the timing, the ability to be the most watchable person in a scene without appearing to try. Across critically acclaimed films, with recent awards recognition for his work, and a billion-dollar blockbuster, the star power was always there. It just took the right role to make everyone else notice it.