Glen Powell offers movie cameo to winner of lookalike contest: 'Cash-value prize of $6 billion'

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After lookalike contests featuring Timothee Chalamet, Jeremy Allen White and Harry Styles went viral earlier this month, Glen Powell has promised a film cameo to the winner of his lookalike contest, which was held this week in Austin, Texas.

With his mother and aunt helping judge the competition, Fox 7 Austin and Pop Crave reported that Powell jokingly rang into the event, which he called “the Justin Hartley lookalike contest.”

“In all seriousness, I have assembled you here today for an important mission. I want to pull off a heist, and we don’t need masks because we all have the same face. It’s the perfect crime! They can’t get all of us because we are one: a criminal ‘Glenterprise,’” he said.

Powell, 36, then said the winner would get to gift a cameo in one of his upcoming movies to a family member.

“You may know that my parents make a cameo in every movie I make, but today the winner of the Glen Powell lookalike contest wins their parents, or any family member of their choice, a cameo in my next movie,” he said. “I am completely serious. This is a cash-value prize of $6 billion.”

When the ballots were counted, physician’s assistant Maxwell Braunstein had been crowned the winner.

“My face hasn’t hurt like this since I was 10 and at Disney World,” said Braunstein.

Braunstein said he wasn’t surprised by the result as he’s been compared to Powell before, ever since the actor’s career took flight with a supporting role in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.

“I did tell people I was going to win. I did mention that to my friends that sent it to me,” said Braunstein.

Along with the movie cameo, Braunstein received $5, a cowboy hat, free queso for a year from a local taco restaurant and a special message from Powell himself.

“Blessed that your mother thinks I’m anything like ya,” said Braunstein.

Following his hit movie Twisters earlier this summer, Powell is hard at work on a revamp of The Running Man. He’ll also appear next year in Huntington, a black comedy co-starring Margaret Qualley and Ed Harris.

After years working as a struggling actor, Powell had a breakthrough moment playing Lt. Jake “Hangman: Seresin in Maverick. He continued his hit streak with the 2023 rom-com smash Anyone But You, in which he starred opposite Sydney Sweeney, and this year’s Twisters and Hit Man.

During a recent interview with Vanity Fair, he reflected on that long, uphill battle and never quitting on his acting dreams.

“Even at the darkest moments in that town, when I really didn’t have anything happening, you sort of have to lie to yourself, at least a little bit, and act like this is that chapter of the story where things just aren’t going right,” Powell said. “You have to believe in the Hollywood legends of those people that you admire, the people that you’re chasing, that had those long stretches of famine as well.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com