Chris Pratt in ‘Guardians’ Changed Hollywood Leading Men

Glen Powell is tipping his hat to Chris Pratt for indirectly helping him became a bonafide movie star. That’s because Powell views Pratt’s breakout role in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” as a turning point when Hollywood became more open to leading men who were “a little more silly and buoyant.”

“Guardians of the Galaxy” opened in 2014, the same year Powell had a small supporting role in the action movie “The Expendables 3.” Powell had been trying and failing for years at that point to hit big in Hollywood. He told GQ magazine in a new cover story that the industry’s preference for “brooding or dark” types like Christian Bale and “Twilight”-era Robert Pattinson left him on the outs when it came to casting big roles. But Pratt changed things.

“I remember when Chris Pratt broke out in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’” Powell said. “There’s no doubt it really helped — not being brooding or dark. Like, I’m not Christian Bale. Christian Bale has a gravitas and a weight, and Pattinson had his thing. And when Pratt kind of appeared on the scene where he was doing things that were a little more silly and buoyant, that’s where I feel most at home. And that’s where I feel like I had a gear that is a necessary flavor in terms of Hollywood, and not a gear that a lot of guys can play.”

Powell is now one of Hollywood’s hottest leading men. He’s notched box office hits with “Anyone but You” and “Twisters,” and he’s now headlining his first action movie star vehicle with Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man,” in theaters Nov. 14 from Paramount. When it came to getting in action star mode, Powell was able to call up his mentor and “Top Gun: Maverick” co-star Tom Cruise for guidance. Cruise told him to approach the gig as a physical job.

“I knew that based on the Stephen King book, [my character] Ben Richards was a tank,” Powell said. “I was like, ‘Okay, I got to be a bit of a weapon.’ And so that’s why I trained the way I trained on this. I put on a lot of muscle. A lot of it was functional. A lot of it was so I could absorb hits. But a lot of it was also authentically for an audience… I went from going, ‘Oh, I’m an actor on a movie,’ to ‘I’m a high-performance athlete.’ And I’m just very lucky that I have someone like Tom who I could literally go, ‘Hey, what do I do to survive something?’ 

Cruise also helps keep Powell in check. The actor told GQ that “Cruise gave me shit” on the “Top Gun” set when he showed up with a mushroom-infused coffee drink.

“You put ashwagandha and reishi and Cordyceps and all these things in your coffee,” Powell said. “So I blended it, mixed it up, put it in this kind of a mason jar and brought it to set. I’m flying that day so I’m drinking this thing. But it’s all these ground-up mushrooms—it kind of looks like just this hearty, just disgusting…. [Tom] kind of looks at me for a second, he’s like: ‘You look like you’re drinking a stool sample. What is that?’ I was like, ‘Okay, this one, I took this too far.’”

Head over to GQ magazine’s website to read Powell’s cover story in its entirety.