Robert Rodriguez Shares How He Discovered a 14-Year-Old Glen Powell for ‘Spy Kids 3-D’
Christian Blauvelt
When Glen Powell was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame in Austin May 15, there was one obvious person to give him the honor: The director who discovered Powell, when the actor was just 14 years old, Robert Rodriguez.
Powell grew up in Austin right at the moment that it was starting to become a solid film production hub, thanks in large part to Rodriguez, the auteur behind “El Mariachi” and “From Dusk Till Dawn” and who’d founded Austin’s Troublemaker Studios. When Rodriguez was casting for “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over,” he was looking for a number of “local hires” to round out the cast.
“I remember distinctly how surprised I was [by Powell] because we’d cast a bunch of people from L.A.,” Rodriguez told IndieWire at the red carpet for the induction — which was also the Austin premiere of Netflix’s “Hit Man,” starring Powell and directed by Richard Linklater. “And then to fill out the other roles [on ‘Spy Kids 3-D’], we cast local actors who don’t get as much experience as the ones who are working in L.A. So you’re just trying to find someone locally that won’t get nervous, that’ll give a performance that kind of measures up to the other actors. He walks in with a stature and his confidence and just nails it. And I was just so surprised he was so good that I said aside to him and his mom afterwards, ‘What are you planning on doing?’ He goes, ‘I’m going all the way. I want to be an actor,’ which was cool to hear from someone from Austin.”
“So now, it’s no surprise to see this,” added Rodriguez. “But he already had that quality at 14 and clarity of vision that that’s what he was supposed to be. I just love that.”
Rodriguez told part of this story again during his speech honoring Powell, at which time he added that he’s particularly excited about Powell’s upcoming “Twisters” (one of IndieWire’s own most anticipated movies of the summer). But during the induction ceremony, it was a clip from another movie that particularly excited the crowd in attendance. The Austin Film Society, which manages the Texas Film Hall of Fame, showed a sizzle reel of Powell’s roles to date, and the one that elicited the most enthusiastic response from the audience? Him showing up all fresh-faced and kid-movie earnest as “long-fingered boy” in “Spy Kids 3-D.”
