‘Twisters’ Star Glen Powell Intends to Play the Hollywood Game

The cookies weren’t selling.

It was a blustery day in suburban Austin, Texas, in 1996, and Lauren and Leslie Powell had a sales quota to meet for their Girl Scout troop. But it was that cookie time of year: Thin Mints and Caramel deLites were seemingly up for grabs everywhere.

Glen, their 8-year-old brother, suggested a marketing gambit. “He had us make signs that advertised ‘free gift with every purchase,’ and we put them up around the neighborhood,” Leslie recalled.

Glen was the gift.

“He would hide in some honeysuckle bushes and pop out after a purchase to perform Elvis songs,” she said, laughing. “That’s my big brother. Ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.”

I confess: Until I heard stories like that one — and spent time with the hound dog himself — I didn’t have high hopes for this profile. Glen Powell? I figured he was a dumb jock who coasted into a movie career on his all-American good looks. Boring.

Yes, fine, Powell has been having a bona fide Hollywood moment. He stood nude on a cliff top with Sydney Sweeney in “Anyone but You” at Christmas. He is currently starring on Netflix in “Hit Man,” a comedy-drama-thriller-romance. And in July, Powell will be outrunning big-budget tornadoes in “Twisters.”

But a superstar in the making?

C’mon.

I met Powell, 35, for breakfast in April at the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. He showed up in a tight blue polo accessorized with a chain necklace and chest hair. (Perhaps he was in character, I snarked to myself, as Good-Looking Frat Guy, a bit part he played in “Stuck in Love,” a 2012 romance.) An omelet was ordered. Tabasco sauce was summoned and squirted.