Actor Glen Powell has claimed that Chris Pratt’s performance in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy helped to change expectations for Hollywood leading men.
The 36-year-old, best known for his roles in Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You, was known mostly for supporting roles when Guardians of the Galaxy, in which he stars as space adventurer Peter Quill, was released in 2014.
Pratt has so far played Peter, aka Star-Lord, in a total of six Marvel movies. Although the character was considered to be a relatively obscure figure from Marvel’s comics, he has since become a fan favourite after being reinvented as a roguish, witty hero with a love of dancing.
Speaking to GQ, Powell said that the success of Pratt’s performance helped him as an actor, as he believed that Hollywood was previously only interested in casting leading men in “brooding or dark” roles, portrayed by the likes of Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson.
“When Pratt kind of appeared on the scene where he was doing things that were a little more silly and buoyant, that’s where I feel most at home,” he said.
“And that’s where I feel like I had a gear that is a necessary flavour in terms of Hollywood, and not a gear that a lot of guys can play.”
Powell’s next role is the lead in Edgar Wright’s adaptation of The Running Man.
The film will be his first lead performance in an action movie; he revealed that he reached out to Tom Cruise for advice on the part.
“I knew that based on the Stephen King book, [my character] Ben Richards was a tank,” Powell said. “I was like, ‘Okay, I got to be a bit of a weapon.’ And so that’s why I trained the way I trained on this. I put on a lot of muscle.”
“A lot of it was functional, he added. “A lot of it was so I could absorb hits. But a lot of it was also authentically for an audience… I went from going, ‘Oh, I’m an actor on a movie,’ to ‘I’m a high-performance athlete.’ And I’m just very lucky that I have someone like Tom who I could literally go, ‘Hey, what do I do to survive something?’
Pratt, meanwhile, has since gone on to become of the highest grossing actors of all-time, thanks to his Marvel role as well as lead parts in the Jurassic World franchise and The Super Mario Bros Movie.
