If you’re an A-list star seeking advice on performing your own stunts, there has never been a better mentor in Hollywood than Tom Cruise. Fortunately for Glen Powell, he has the Mission: Impossible star on speed dial.
Powell tells Entertainment Weekly in our latest cover story that when he was first cast as Ben Richards in director Edgar Wright’s dystopian thriller The Running Man, his Top Gun: Maverick costar and mentor was his first call.
“What is your advice on not only how to make these things look authentic for an audience, but how to survive a movie?” Powell recalls asking Cruise during a two-and-a-half-hour conversation.
“And he was very clear about what that journey looks like,” he adds. “One was clearly stating that stunts are just as painful as the real thing. He’s like, you’ve got to really fortify your body because it’s like a normal fight — those physics are still the physics of what is actually happening. If you get slammed onto your back from a table, you’re going to feel that someone slammed you on the back from a table, and you’re going to do it 12 or 13 times. Right?”
The other lesson he learned from Cruise was the importance of respecting the stunts themselves. “It was made very clear after talking to him that there was a real sense of discipline around these things, and to treat these stunts with reverence, because you can get extremely hurt, and he knows it better than anyone,” Powell says. “He’s broken every bone in his body. He’s like, this is not messing around.”
Like the 1982 Stephen King novel on which it’s based, The Running Man follows Ben Richards, an out-of-work father desperate for money for his sick child, as he joins the eponymous game show where contestants — allowed to go anywhere in the world — are chased by hunters hired to kill them. Because Richards isn’t a trained fighter or superhero, Powell knew this meant getting his “ass kicked,” but Cruise also reminded him it’s “a great privilege.”
Ross Ferguson/Paramount
“He was also talking about obviously the investment that it takes for an actor to do your own stunts — it’s a great privilege and it’s super important to sell it to an audience,” he says. “To do all those things is really, really crucial to sell what you need to sell in a movie and to justify people’s ticket prices. If they’re following you, they want to know that that’s the commitment. If I want you to show up for me, I’ve got to show up for you.”
He continues, “I’ve got to say, Tom is obviously not only one of the greatest actors, but one of the greatest stunt performers. And really to have him as a friend and a mentor to make sure that I survived this movie was extraordinary.”
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The Running Man, which also stars Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, William H. Macy, Emilia Jones, and more, hits theaters Nov. 14.
