Every actor will remember the one role that changed their lives forever.

In Glen Powell’s case, it was Top Gun: Maverick.

The actor was having financial problems which only got worse with the pandemic, and for a while he was very stressed, but it paid off when Top Gun became the huge success Tom Cruise always knew it would be.

Glen Powell also credits Tom Cruise for giving priceless advice that helped him get through the unexpected attention that comes with being a movie star, and he couldn’t be more grateful for the possibility of working with one of his favorite actors.

Glen Powell Was Almost Broke When He Got The Role In ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

It was a tough time for Glen Powell before his iconic role as Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick. The actor was excited about this incredible movie, which was set to be released in 2020, but then the pandemic hit, and his dreams were crushed. Top Gun: Maverick was Tom Cruise’s special project, and he refused to let it release only on streaming services.

Because of that, the release of the movie was postponed and ended up coming out in 2022, with a theatrical release, just like Tom Cruise wanted. But the waiting period was intense for Glen Powell, as it put him in a financial strain.

“I’d never made any significant amount of money on a movie, including Top Gun,” the actor shared in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Apparently, his financial problems became serious, and people around him worried. “I was depleting a bank account to a point where my accountant was like, ‘This pandemic cannot last much longer.'”

Even though he trusted Tom Cruise to know what would be best for Top Gun (and judging by the massive box office success the movie ended up being, he was right), he still felt they were thinking about it from different perspectives. “Tom was already Tom; I was waiting for my life to change,” he argued.

Glen Powell Values Tom Cruise’s Advice

Despite how Tom Cruise’s instincts to wait until a theatrical release was possible stressed Glen Powell at the time, he acknowledges that the iconic actor was right, and the staggering success of the movie changed his life and career forever. Glen Powell greatly appreciates Tom Cruise, as an actor and as a colleague and mentor, and when he was asked about the comparisons between the two of them, he didn’t want to hear it.

“First of all, there will never be another Tom Cruise,” he stated. “That is a singular career in a singular moment, but also movie stars of the ’80s, ’90s, early 2000s, those will never be re-created.”

Following his incredible success in Top Gun: Maverick, Glen Powell was cast in Sydney Sweeney’s Anyone But You and he felt out of his depth with all the attention he was receiving. But Tom Cruise gave him a very important piece of advice that he uses to navigate those feelings.

“I kept coming back to something that Cruise had said, which was, ‘The world’s going to become really loud, and it’s your decision how much you turn up or down the volume,'” the actor shared, “because the world did get really loud, but I didn’t know where those dials were. I was like, ‘I know we talked about this, but I don’t know how to work this console.’ Meanwhile, Sydney, through Euphoria, had been on this ride and she was like, ‘This is all good,'” he laughed.

Both financially and personally, Tom Cruise and Top Gun: Maverick completely changed Glen Powell’s life.