Glen Powell portrayed Lt. Jake 'Hangman' Seresin in the Tom Cruise-led film, 'Top Gun: Maverick'
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Glen Powell's life changed once he portrayed Lt. Jake "Hangman" Seresin in "Top Gun: Maverick," but before the film flew high in theaters, the actor was going broke.
"I’d never made any significant amount of money on a movie, including "Top Gun," and I was depleting a bank account to a point where my accountant was like, ‘This pandemic cannot last much longer,’" Powell told The Hollywood Reporter.
"But Tom was already Tom; I was waiting for my life to change," he added.
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Tom Cruise, who played Maverick in the 1986 movie "Top Gun," reprised his role for the 2022 sequel. (CBS via Getty Images)
Due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, "Top Gun: Maverick" wasn't released until two years after production wrapped, but became a mega-hit at the box office once it was released in May 2022.
In an interview with Variety at the time, Cruise noted that he wasn't going to allow the film to hit a streaming service first, which is what happened to many movies during the pandemic.
"That’s not going to happen. Ever," he stated, later adding: "I make movies for the big screen."
In "Top Gun: Maverick," Powell played a pilot being trained by Cruise's character, Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. Cruise reprised his role as Maverick from the original 1986 movie.
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As for any advice Cruise gave him while prepping for the role? "Lean into the d-----baggery of it all," the "Anyone But You" actor said Cruise told him.
Glen Powell starred alongside Tom Cruise in the wildly successful 2022 film "Top Gun: Maverick." (Han Myung-Gu/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)
"Sometimes you can fall into the trap of wanting to be liked on camera," Powell explained during a 2022 conversation with Kate Hudson for Variety.
"And in a movie like this, where you know there’s going to be a lot of eyes on it, you don’t want to be Draco Malfoy," he said, referencing the character in the "Harry Potter" series.
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"Tom gave me this advice: ‘For the ending to work, you have to completely lean into that. Everybody else in the movie is questioning their own ability,'" Powell said, recalling what Cruise said about Powell’s character.
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"You’re the only guy that’s not questioning it. So, if there’s any sort of apology in anything you say, the movie doesn’t work. Lean into the d-----baggery of it all."
In "Top Gun: Maverick," Powell played a pilot being trained by Cruise's character, Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. Cruise starred in the original 1986 movie. (Marc Piasecki/FilmMagic)
Powell originally auditioned for the role of Lt. Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw in "Top Gun," which ultimately went to actor Miles Teller.
Fox News Digital's Caroline Thayer contributed to this report
Mariah Haas is a senior entertainment editor for Fox News Digital.
