Tom Cruise Gave Glen Powell Key Advice While Filming The Running Man

To prepare for the stunts in The Running Man, Glen Powell sought advice from one of the best to ever do it, Tom Cruise.

What advice did Tom Cruise give Glen Powell?

In The Running Man, Powell plays Ben Richards, a game show contestant who must stay alive for 30 days to win a lucrative grand prize. In this game, Ben is a runner, a player who must avoid death at the hands of the murderous Hunters.

The Running Man is billed as an action thriller that involves several intense set pieces and sequences. While speaking with EW, Powell admitted that The Running Man was his most physical project to date.

How did Powell plan to survive a long, grueling shoot? Luckily, Powell knows Cruise, who is arguably the best actor to speak with when it comes to performing your own stunts.

“What is your advice on not only how to make these things look authentic for an audience, but how to survive a movie?” Powell asked Cruise. The Mission: Impossible star then spent “two and a half hours” speaking to Powell about stunt work.

“It was made very clear after talking to him that there was a real sense of discipline around these things and to treat these stunts with reverence, because you can get extremely hurt, and he knows it better than anyone,” Powell explained. “He’s broken every bone in his body. He’s like, ‘This is not messing around.'”

Cruise emphasized that performing stunts is a “privilege” that strengthens an actor’s relationship to the audience.

“To do all those things is really, really crucial to sell what you need to sell in a movie, and to justify people’s ticket prices,” Powell added. “If they’re following you, they want to know that that’s the commitment — if I want you to show up for me, I’ve got to show up for you.”

Powell will attempt to follow in Cruise’s footsteps and become an action hero as the star of The Running Man, Edgar Wright’s feature film adaptation of the Stephen King novel. The Running Man opens in theaters on November 14, 2025.

Originally reported by Dan Girolamo for SuperHeroHype.

Source: Comingsoon.net