2 min read
Ask any action star and they’ll tell you that injuries are just a hazard of the job. They’re also badges of honor. Yes, Tom Cruise broke his leg leaping across rooftops for Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Jackie Chan dislocated his pelvis shooting a stunt for Police Story. But injuries are also proof to the actors, and the audience, that what they filmed was real. Their bodies were actually on the line, and that’s just as exciting as it is dangerous.
So even though Glen Powell revealed to Esquire in our latest cover story that he ruptured a tendon in his hand to the point that he might have lost it while filming The Running Man last year, the actor says that he didn’t even think twice about returning to set the next day.
According to Powell, he suffered the injury due to blunt force from a retractable prop knife during one of the film’s fight scenes. The pain and swelling sent him to an emergency room in Bulgaria—where they were filming the 2025 Edgar Wright reboot. There, doctors informed him that he had a septic infection and needed surgery right away. “This is the real deal,” they cautioned before putting him under. “You could wake up without a hand.”
Instead of resting after surgery, Powell returned to set the very next day. The screenwriters adapted the script to include his new wound, and Powell found himself scaling an apartment building with one good arm in nothing but a bath towel around his waist. Plus, it was “negative 10 degree weather” in Bulgaria, he says.
“I left that movie broken, physically and emotionally,” Powell tells Esquire. You can read the whole interview here.
Now Powell says that his time filming The Running Man—and the results of its poor box-office sales—taught him a valuable lesson about his limits. He’s working on roles that “remind myself what I love about this job” and spending even more time with family.
Powell also just released season 2 of Chad Powers, his Hulu comedy series about a disgraced football star who disguises himself as a college athlete. Next up, he’s starring in Judd Apatow’s The Comeback King and J.J. Abrams’s mysterious sci-fi film, The Great Beyond, in 2027. Luckily, with both of his hands.
