‘Anyone But You’ star Glen Powell talks about chasing the “female gaze” for intimate scenes in ‘Hit Man’ while battling “crazy” pain with costar Adria Arjona — plus, why he decided it was time to move back to Texas even as his star is on the rise in Hollywood.
Glen Powell continues to ride high after the breakout success of his film Anyone But You with Sydney Sweeney — and that steamy press tour — which is why he took such care with the intimate scenes in his new film Hit Man, with costar Adria Arjona.
Powell spoke with IndieWire earlier this year about how intentional they were about their approach to the film’s sex scenes. Powell, who cowrote the film with director Richard Linklater, felt the scenes were an essential part of his character Gary’s growth and evolution.
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At the same time, he noted, “As much as this is a fantasy for Gary, it’s a fantasy for [Arjona’s character Madison],” he explained. “And you have to have the female gaze on that sex scene. So we really team-sported it to show images that we got excited about, things you’ve never seen before.”
“Because that’s the thing,” he added. “Sex scenes can be kinda paint-by-numbers and so boring and so ineffective.”
Powell faced an extra challenge on Hit Man, alongside Arjona, in really selling those intimate moments, which she said were all shot in one day. Unfortunately, on that day, she and Powell both had “a crazy rash.”
“We were both in so much pain,” she told the Just for Variety podcast on Thursday, which really impacted their ability to take the moment seriously. “We would just die laughing, ‘How much makeup do you have on your ass right now?’ I was like, ‘So much, it’s not even funny.'”
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To make matters worse, there was one scene that took place in a bathtub. Arjona said a crew member put Dawn dish soap in the water, which “strips you of all your oils of your skin.”
“That’s used for baby ducks when there’s an oil spill, for God’s sake,” she said. The resulting concoction had a dramatic affect on them. “We soaked in this bathtub for an hour, and I get out of the tub and all of a sudden I dry myself and I can’t bend my knees because I have no oils,” she said.
With all of these extra complications, Arjona praised Powell for being a “gentleman” the whole way, as well as a “gracious” collaborator. “He doesn’t like winning on his own,” she told Variety. “When you’re an actor and you’re in a scene with another actor and you’re doing romantic movies and romantic scenes, you need someone that wants to win with you, and Glen is the definition of that.”
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While he’s opening up on the screen, Powell made a personal decision that sees him withdrawing from the Hollywood lifestyle he’s been living the past 15 years. As he told The Hollywood Reporter, he feels he’s made it to the point in his career he can finally “leave Hollywood.”
After the breakout success of Anyone But You, Powell finds himself an in-demand leading man, enjoying a level of success similar to costar Sweeney. Both suddenly find themselves with a little bit of clout in the industry, and with that kind of power comes flexibility.
For Powell, that means moving back home to Austin, Texas, where he can be closer to family and maybe enjoy a little bit of privacy. His extremely public breakup with model Gigi Paris while he and Sweeney were strategically canoodling while promoting their rom-com was just about as much scrutiny as he could take.
“It’s like I’ve earned the ability to go back to my family,” Powell explained to THR. Now, he’s sold his home in the Hollywood Hills and purchased a new “home” just 30 minutes from his parents’ place.
The actor credits fellow Texas native Matthew McConaughey for some keen insight and perspective in a decade-old conversation. “He’s like, ‘Hollywood is the Matrix, man. You plug in and it’s all fake world,'” Powell remembered. “He’s like, “Then I go to Austin, and I unplug. It’s all real. Those are my friends, that’s my family, my actions matter there.'”
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“And he’s right,” Powell emphasized. “If you’re here, you live in the Matrix all the time, there’s no separation of those worlds.” At this point in his life and career, he’s looking for that separation.
He’s also looking forward to escaping that “fishbowl feeling” of living in Hollywood where cameras professional and personal seem to be pointing at him every where he goes. That way, he can enjoy things like stepping into that world on late-night shows, press tours and the like, but also unplug and step away from it.
When talking about the way he’s blown up in Hollywood over the past year or so, Powell is quick to pump the brakes on thinking he could ever be another Tom Cruise. In fact, he said “there will never be another Tom Cruise.”
But it’s not just the Top Gun star he’s talking about. “Movie stars of the ’80s, ’90s, early 2000s, those will never be re-created,” he said. There has certainly been a lot of discussion in recent years about whether or not the age of the blockbuster movie star is over.
Whether it is or not may be a topic for entertainment historians to break down in the years to come. When they come to the chapters on the 2020s, though, you can bet they’ll be talking about Glen Powell.
