The role that saved Glen Powell from poverty: “I got paid bare minumum”

Posted On December 15, 2025December 15, 2025

Very few actors dubbed the ‘next big thing’ actually live up to that potential, and, as it stands, Glen Powell is making all the right moves.

Since he captured the world’s attention with his role as a brash fighter pilot in Top Gun: Maverick, the impossibly good-looking superstar has gone from strength to strength, already drawing comparisons to his co-star Tom Cruise, although some people might find that more insulting than complimentary.

With all his recent success, it’s easy to forget that Powell has actually been around for a really long time, with his first movie credit coming from 2003’s Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, in which he played everybody’s favourite character, ‘Long-Fingered Boy’. As a young adult, he cropped up in various TV shows like CSI: Miami and NCIS and even made a brief appearance in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, where it’s still funny to watch him get threatened by Bane all these years later.

The reality of being an actor is that, even if you’re regularly appearing in prominent movies or TV shows, it’s hard to actually make a living in Hollywood. As Powell explained to Jake Shane on his Therapuss podcast, he struggled to get by for the longest time before finally landing a part in the action movie The Expendables 3.

“I got paid bare minimum, but I was there for several months, so I made enough,” he said, explaining, “It was the most money I ever made. It was like 70,000 bucks or something like that. And just remember being like, ‘I don’t have to think about a cup of coffee, how much it costs’.”

For those who missed out on the cultural phenomenon that was The Expendables, it started as an excuse to get a bunch of washed-up action heroes together for a big payday, with the first film starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and others, while the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Wesley Snipes, and Chuck Norris would join later down the line.

Powell joined the series as part of a new, younger team of heroes brought in to replace the old-timers who eventually get outshone by the gun-toting pensioners, because that’s just how these movies work. 

Prior to his gig with Sly, Powell was living hand-to-mouth in Los Angeles, slogging away to make his dreams come true. “You look at a rotisserie chicken like, ‘how long can I make this last?” he recalled, “I would go to dinner with people, but I would never eat. I couldn’t afford to split”. Obviously, there are people who have to go through far worse hardships than this, such that some actors work for much longer and never achieve even a fraction of the success that Powell has, which is by no means a dig at him, just a reminder that, behind all the glitz and glamour, show business is a tough gig.

Thankfully, Powell has been able to make it work, and now, he can buy all the rotisserie chickens he wants without a second thought. 

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