Choose the Movie, Not the Part: What Tom Cruise Taught Glen Powell (and Every Actor Should Know)

There’s a moment in Glen Powell’s career that didn’t make it into any trailer, but it may have shaped his entire trajectory more than any scene he’s shot since.

It was the summer of 2019. Powell had auditioned for Rooster in Top Gun: Maverick — a role built on grief, legacy, and a father he never knew. He felt good about it. Then the call came: the part had gone to Miles Teller. Powell has described sinking into despair on what he calls the worst Fourth of July of his life, dressed, almost comically, in patriotic red-white-and-blue.

Days later, Tom Cruise called anyway. He still wanted Powell in the film — just not as Rooster. Powell wasn’t sure he wanted in anymore. So Cruise and producer Jerry Bruckheimer sat him down and asked a simple question: what kind of career do you want?

Powell’s answer was immediate: yours. Cruise’s response reframed everything. He told Powell he doesn’t succeed by picking great roles — he succeeds by picking great movies, and then making the role great from inside them.

It sounds like a subtle distinction. It isn’t. It’s a different theory of how a career, and a performance, actually gets built.

The Trap of “Waiting for the Great Role”

Most actors are trained to think in terms of roles. Is the character complex? Does it have a big monologue? Does it look good on a reel? This is how casting breakdowns are written, how agents pitch auditions, and how actors are taught to evaluate opportunity.

Cruise’s advice inverts that hierarchy. A role is not a fixed object you either get or don’t. It’s raw material. The size of the part on the page is almost irrelevant next to the strength of the story it lives inside and the craft the actor brings to filling it. Rooster, as written, might have been the flashier role. But Hangman — smaller, spikier, less sympathetic on paper — became one of the film’s most talked-about performances, because Powell built something inside it rather than waiting for the writers to hand him greatness.

This is a philosophy of agency. Instead of asking “is this part good enough for me,” the actor asks “what can I make of this, inside something worth being part of.” One question breeds entitlement and disappointment. The other breeds craft.

Why This Applies Far Beyond Movie Stardom

It’s tempting to read this as A-list logic — something that only works if you’re famous enough to get invited onto a Tom Cruise blockbuster in the first place. But the underlying principle scales down to any actor, at any level, in any medium.

For film and TV actors, the lesson reframes the audition process itself. Chasing only “juicy” roles filters out an enormous amount of good work in favor of a narrow definition of what looks impressive. An actor who instead asks whether a project is well-made, well-run, and full of people worth learning from will end up building a far more interesting body of work — and, ironically, will often get noticed because of what they did with a supposedly minor part.

For stage actors, the advice fits even more naturally, because theatre has always understood something film sometimes forgets: there are no small parts. A regional production of a strong play will outlast a starring role in a weak one, both artistically and in terms of what an actor actually learns. Stage actors who build their reputations on ensemble work, not lead billing, are already living out exactly what Cruise described — choosing the production for its integrity, then making their part essential to it.

For working actors without the luxury of choice, the principle isn’t really about choosing at all — it’s about mindset. Not every actor gets to pick between great movies. But almost every actor can choose how they treat the material they do get: as something to inhabit fully rather than something to merely get through. Cruise’s own reputation was built this way long before he had unlimited choice of projects — treating supporting parts with the same intensity he’d later bring to leads.

The Craft Underneath the Advice

There’s a reason this idea came from Cruise specifically. Few actors have been as openly, almost obsessively committed to elevating whatever project he’s in — reportedly doing his own driving, flying, climbing, and stunt work not for spectacle alone, but because he believes the actor’s job is to make the world of the film feel true. That instinct is the same one behind his advice to Powell: don’t wait for a perfect role to unlock your effort. Bring the effort, and the role becomes the vehicle for it.

It also reframes rejection. Powell’s story only works because he didn’t get the role he wanted. The lesson wasn’t available to him until the door to Rooster closed. What Cruise offered wasn’t consolation — it was a completely different frame for what “winning” a role even means.

The Takeaway for Any Actor, Anywhere

Whether you’re workshopping a two-hander in a black-box theatre, booking guest spots on television, or standing in for the lead in a touring production, the same test applies: is this a good production, with people who care about the work, that I can throw myself into completely? If yes, the size of the role becomes a secondary question. Craft it well enough, and it stops being small.

Cruise chose great movies and made the roles great. Powell learned that a role is only as small as the effort brought to it — and that lesson didn’t need a movie star budget to be true. It just needed an actor willing to stop waiting for permission to do great work.

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Wayne Creed

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