Tom Holland took his first ballet class at the age of nine and his first West End stage at the age of twelve, starring in the title role of Billy Elliot the Musical for two years. The performance required him to dance, act, and sing every night for thousands of Londoners. It also required him to do his own laundry, which is how his mother tells the
Biography
Tom Holland took his first ballet class at the age of nine and his first West End stage at the age of twelve, starring in the title role of Billy Elliot the Musical for two years. The performance required him to dance, act, and sing every night for thousands of Londoners. It also required him to do his own laundry, which is how his mother tells the origin story.
He was fifteen when Ron Howard cast him in The Impossible opposite Naomi Watts. He was nineteen when Marvel cast him as Spider-Man — the third actor in a decade to wear the suit. The audition, he later said, was three hours of backflips on Robert Downey Jr.'s living room floor. He got the part.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe gave him the largest teenage audience any actor has ever had. Spider-Man: No Way Home grossed nearly two billion dollars in a pandemic year. But Holland has worked hard to escape the web. Cherry, with the Russo brothers, cast him as a heroin-addicted Iraq veteran. The Crowded Room put him in a multiple-personality lead. He produced both through his own company, Brothers Trust, which also runs his substantial charity work in England and Africa.
He is a Lindy Hop-tier dancer. He is a scratch-handicap golfer. He once posted a video of himself doing a backflip into a fountain and the Borough of Kingston asked him, politely, to stop. He is partnered with Zendaya, whom he met on the set of Homecoming in 2016.
What will separate Holland from the other Marvel alumni is whether the post-Spider-Man catalog holds. The early evidence — a sober Cherry, a brave Crowded Room, the upcoming Romeo and Juliet — suggests a young man who understands that star power is rented, not owned.
