Before Top Gun, Glen Powell Almost Played A Beloved Star Wars Hero

Glen Powell's been starring in TV shows and movies for a while now, but it wasn't until the 2020s that he became a household name. It was with "Top Gun: Maverick," released in 2022, that Powell rose to proper movie star status; he's since been starring in one hit film after another, like "Anyone But You" in 2023 and "Twisters" in 2024. In 2025, he'll be starring in "The Running Man," a film adaptation of Stephen King's amazing 1982 novel of the same name.

Before Powell could rise to such heights, he had to deal with countless rejections. One rejection that particularly stung came around 2016, when Disney and Lucasfilm were looking for actors to play a young Han Solo in the film "Solo: A Star Wars Story." Competing against other prospective "Solo" stars like Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller, and Dave Franco, Powell was devastated when he dropped the ball at the last moment and the role went to Alden Ehrenreich instead.

"I can joke about it now, [but] I blew that final audition," he told GQ UK in a 2024 profile. He added, "It's haunting when you blow those moments."

While everyone deals with rejection throughout their careers, rejection in Hollywood has a unique sting. A single role can change an actor's whole life. And when you lose out on a role you really wanted, you might be reminded of the loss on billboards and magazine covers for weeks, even months on end. Powell's method of avoiding envy has been to try to keep a Zen attitude about the whole situation. As he put it, "That was always somebody else's ride to go on. ... It was never yours to go on. If you put your time in, you'll get your ride."

The sting of losing the Han Solo role likely lessened for Powell after seeing how the film disappointed at the box office. Although "Solo" was not without its charms, it still earned less than half of what "Rogue One:  A Star Wars Story" had only two years before, and Ehrenreich was not launched into stardom as many expected. It didn't help that young Han Solo is a role with a ton of baggage attached. Powell may have been devastated when he blew the final audition, but maybe it was for the best that audiences were never asked to compare him to young Harrison Ford. 

Making things trickier for Powell would've been that he doesn't actually look much like a young Ford. Sure, make-up and confidence can go a long way, but it'd be hard to fully believe that Powell, with his distinct facial features, is really supposed to be Han Solo 10 years before we saw him in "Episode IV — A New Hope."

Powell's lack of Ford resemblance also hurt him a few years before that with his audition for "Cowboys vs Aliens," where Powell tried out for the role of Ford's character's son. That time, Powell lost to a young Paul Dano. This was during a particularly tough stretch in Powell's career, in which he'd recently auditioned multiple times for "Friday Night Lights" with nothing to show for it. Powell recalled struggling with self-doubt during this time, constantly wondering if he'd ever get his big break. 

"The weird duality of the business is that you have to be ultra competitive but at the same time it's not in your power," Powell explained. "I have to be comfortable with saying, 'I did my best, it wasn't meant to be.'"