Actor Glen Powell, who rose to fame playing a brilliant, cocky pilot in “Top Gun: Maverick” and then rocketed to stardom opposite Sydney Sweeney in “Anyone But You,” is leaving Hollywood after a 15-year career.
actual, The Hollywood ReporterPowell has already traveled to Texas – specifically Austin – where he plans to live near family and finish his college degree, media reports said.
“He said, ‘Hollywood is the Matrix. You turn it on and everything is fake.’ But he said, ‘I go to Austin, I turn it off and everything is real. These are my friends, my family and what I do matters there.'”
“It’s like they’ve earned the right to come back to their families,” Powell told reporters.
According to the magazine, like many actors in recent years, Powell found himself lacking in the glamour of Hollywood and, on a deeper level, struggled to determine what and who was real in his life.
So, according to reporters, Powell followed the advice of superstar actor Matthew McConaughey.
Photo: Rick Kahn/Getty Images
“He would say, ‘Hollywood is the Matrix. You turn it on and everything is fake,'” Powell recalled to the outlet. “He would say, ‘Then I go to Austin and I turn it off and everything is real. These are my friends, my family and what I do matters there.’ And he was right. When you’re here, you’re always living in the Matrix and those worlds aren’t separate. And for me, especially as my parents got older and my nieces and nephews got older, those worlds wanted to be separate.”
The paper said Powell bought a house 30 minutes away from his parents, and that “some of” his parents and two sisters “visit all of his projects, wherever he is in the world.” The paper added that they “keep him awake and make everything more enjoyable.”
Powell’s mother, Cindy, who once worked in the Reagan administration and was an extra in nearly every movie her son was in, told the reporter, “I think sometimes we get in the way, but you never know, because he makes everybody feel loved and cared for.”
Toss Tinseltown
As Blaze News readers likely already know, a number of big-name actors have been leaving their Hollywood bases in recent years.
- Earlier this month it was revealed that actor Adrian Grenier had said he was leaving Hollywood after years of a “hedonistic” lifestyle to start a life of his own in rural Texas.
- Also in May, stuntman and “Jackass” star Steve-O announced he was leaving Hollywood for Tennessee, a state with plentiful land, low taxes and the ability to host “real gun parties.”
- “Rocky” icon Sylvester Stallone announced earlier this year that he was moving to Florida from California, where he had lived with his family for decades.
- Last year, actor Scott Baio also left California after 45 years of residence for Florida. He explained his reasons frankly: “Homeless people defecating on the sidewalks, people taking drugs on the sidewalks in broad daylight, illegal immigrants everywhere, laws that don’t make sense, crime out of control, graffiti everywhere, and I don’t know what my taxes are going to.”
- In 2022, Mark Wahlberg said he was moving from California to Nevada to “give my kids a better life” and because it “just made a lot more sense for us.”
- Comedian and actor Rob Schneider explained why he moved from California in 2022: “I really don’t want Democrats to control my life. There’s not one aspect of my life I don’t want them to interfere with.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censorship and sign up for our newsletter to get stories like this directly to your inbox. Register here!
