Tom Holland

• 1. Introduction

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  Tom Holland, the English actor, has led films that together have grossed more than $9.9 billion worldwide, according to The Numbers. That total places him among the highest-grossing film actors of all time. In 2019 he appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list, and he was born on the 1st of June 1996 as Thomas Stanley Holland. Stardom of this size usually comes with a plan, and his did not look like one. This documentary asks how a boy from south-west London ended up at the top of the box office. It asks why he keeps choosing roles that look nothing like the one that made him famous. And it asks what a reputation for blurting out plot secrets says about a leading man.

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• 2. Kingston Childhood

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  Kingston upon Thames, in south-west London, is where Holland was born, with three younger brothers to follow. His mother, Nicola, is a photographer, and his father, Dominic Holland, is a comedian and author. His paternal grandmother came from County Tipperary in Ireland, and his paternal grandfather came from the Isle of Man. Holland still lives in Kingston upon Thames, close to his parents and brothers. Because both parents work in creative fields, he draws on them for inspiration. He regards his father as a role model, and that father has informally acted as his manager thanks to long experience in the industry.

  At the age of seven, Holland was diagnosed with dyslexia. His parents sent him to Donhead Preparatory School, an all-male Catholic school in Wimbledon, so that he would get the attention he needed. They sent his brothers there too, so that none of the boys felt neglected. Holland liked the school, but the fees began to drain the family's finances. Later he attended Wimbledon College, a Jesuit comprehensive school, and then the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in the Selhurst area of Croydon.

  Janet Jackson songs were a favourite in the Holland house, and the young Holland often danced to them. His teenage years brought other ideas about his future. He briefly attended carpentry school in Cardiff, Wales, and he also considered becoming a primary school teacher because he enjoys being around children. The Jesuit school and the BRIT School came later, but an advertisement for a dance class at his private school had already set a different course in motion.

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• 3. The Billy Elliot Years

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  At the age of nine, Holland joined a hip hop class at the Nifty Feet Dance School in Wimbledon. In 2006 his school group performed at the Richmond Dance Festival, and the choreographer Lynne Page spotted him there. Page worked with Peter Darling, who choreographed Billy Elliot the Musical, and she arranged an audition. The show's director, Stephen Daldry, judged that Holland "had great potential and was a very natural actor". Two years of training followed, covering ballet, tap dancing and acrobatics.

  In June 2008, Holland made his debut at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London's West End. He played Michael Caffrey, the best friend of the story's young hero. Backstage he picked up gymnastics, a skill that would matter again years later. Before 2008 was over, he and co-star Tanner Pflueger were promoted to the title role of Billy Elliot. On his first day in the lead, Holland came down with tonsillitis. He went on stage anyway, drew positive reviews, and saw a doctor the following day.

  School was harder than the stage. When his classmates learned about the dancing, they began to bully him. Holland had hoped that his stage success would make him popular and end the bullying. Instead, working in a professional environment made him mature earlier than his peers, and he struggled to fit in. His GCSE grades suffered as a result. When the musical finished in 2010, he voiced a role in the British dub of the Japanese animated film Arrietty, released in 2011.

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• 4. From Stage to Screen

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  Juan Antonio Bayona received an audition tape from Holland for the film The Impossible, and the director's reply was a meeting. There Bayona asked the young actor to write a letter to his mother and then recite it aloud. Bayona was impressed by the emotional delivery and cast him. In the disaster drama, Holland plays a teenager trapped with his family in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

  Moving from a live audience to a camera was not easy at first. Holland and co-star Naomi Watts filmed physically and psychologically taxing scenes in a 35,000-gallon water tank. Working beside Watts convinced him that he wanted acting as a permanent career. The Impossible premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and earned $180.3 million against a budget of $45 million.

  A. O. Scott of The New York Times called Holland "a terrific young actor" and praised how his character moves from self-involvement to responsibility. Holland won the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance and the London Film Critics Circle Award for Young British Performer of the Year. He also received a nomination for the Goya Award for Best New Actor. Smaller screen credits followed, including the drama How I Live Now in 2013, a voice role in the drama Locke, and a cameo in Billy Elliot the Musical Live in 2014. His next screen roles would cast him as historical figures, first on television and then on the open sea.

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• 5. Becoming Spider-Man

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  In June 2015, Holland signed a six-picture deal with Marvel Studios to play the teenage Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man. He already knew the character well. As a child, he owned 30 Spider-Man costumes and bedding printed with the hero. Holland had auditioned against 1,500 teenagers worldwide, among them the English actors Charlie Rowe and Asa Butterfield. Producers Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal admired his work in The Impossible, Wolf Hall and In the Heart of the Sea. The directors, the Russo brothers, pointed instead to his dancing and gymnastics background. Spider-Man's creator, Stan Lee, said Holland was the "exact age and height" he had pictured when he created the character.

  Wolf Hall, a 2015 BBC Two miniseries, gave Holland four episodes as Gregory Cromwell. Gregory is the son of Thomas Cromwell, who was played by Mark Rylance. Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea, also from 2015, cast him as the teenage sailor Thomas Nickerson. The film is based on a 2000 non-fiction book about the sinking of the American whaling ship Essex in 1820. To prepare, Holland and co-stars including Chris Hemsworth lost significant weight on 500-1,000 calories a day. Holland performed most of his own stunts. Reviews were mixed, and the film grossed $93 million against a $100 million budget. Brian Truitt of USA Today wrote that Holland "does a good job".

  Holland first appeared as Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War in 2016. The film grossed over $1.1 billion against a budget of $250 million and became the highest-grossing film of 2016. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called Holland and Paul Rudd, who played Ant-Man, "seductively high-spirited and hilarious". Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times said Holland made "a strong first impression". The first film built around Holland alone was only a year away.

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• 6. Billion-Dollar Franchise

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  The 70th British Academy Film Awards, held in 2017, handed Holland the Rising Star Award. That same year, Spider-Man: Homecoming earned him an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest actor to play a title role in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. He took some inspiration from the earlier Spider-Man actors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, but wanted to bring something new. The story follows Parker as he juggles high school and superheroics. To prepare, Holland attended The Bronx High School of Science in the Bronx for a few days, and the other students did not believe he had been cast. He felt that mirrored the film's plot, in which the people around Parker do not know his secret. Peter Travers called it "a star performance given by a born actor". The film cost $175 million and grossed over $800 million.

  Avengers: Infinity War arrived in 2018, and Avengers: Endgame followed in 2019. The two films were shot back-to-back, and each earned more than $2 billion. Endgame briefly became the highest-grossing film of all time. Spider-Man: Far From Home, also released in 2019, became the first Spider-Man film to earn $1 billion and finished as the fourth-highest grosser of that year. Ben Travis of Empire magazine called Holland "a note-perfect Spider-Man" and judged him funnier and more believably teenage than his two predecessors. Far From Home also brought Holland a third consecutive Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor, after wins for Civil War and Homecoming.

  In December 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home forced a sharp change of gear. After mature roles in films like Cherry, Holland found it strange to return to Parker. He had to raise his voice pitch and slip back into the mindset of a "naïve, charming teenager". He described the film as the "most ambitious standalone superhero movie ever made". It was released during the COVID-19 pandemic and still became the highest-grossing film of 2021 and the sixth highest-grossing film of all time. It was the first film since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019 to earn more than $1 billion. It also became the highest-rated Spider-Man film on both IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes.

  Wendy Ide of The Guardian wrote that the film "delivers an overflowing, funnel-web cornucopia of treats for Spider-fans" and credited Parker's appeal to his "endearing, puppyish enthusiasm". Kevin Maher of The Times said Holland "owns every inch of the role". Yet in a 2021 interview with GQ, Holland admitted doubts about playing the role again, particularly after he turns 30 in 2026. He voiced a wish to see a live-action Spider-Man film starring Miles Morales, while Amy Pascal said she wanted him to continue.

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• 7. Spoilers and Privacy

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  His Marvel co-stars labelled Holland the "least trustworthy" member of the cast when it comes to spoilers. He describes himself as indiscreet and has a reputation for accidentally giving away major plot points in interviews and at press conferences. To head off trouble, he read only parts of the Captain America: Civil War script. Joe Russo likewise withheld the Avengers: Endgame script, so Holland knew only his own lines.

  Olivia Singh of Business Insider connected Holland's description of himself as "an impossible people pleaser" to burnout and to an incident in which he vomited after a press conference. Others describe a steadier figure. Nadia Khomami of The Guardian wrote of his "cheeky British charm, vulnerability and wit". His co-star from The Impossible, the German actor Sönke Möhring, called him "down to earth, very polite and a friendly kid". Kevin Macdonald, who directed him in How I Live Now, praised him as confident, articulate and enthusiastic.

  In a 2019 interview with The Sunday Times, Holland argued for more representation of racial minorities and the LGBT community in film. That same year, the filmmaker Martin Scorsese criticised Marvel films for lacking human emotion. Holland answered that Scorsese had never made one, so he might not fully understand the experience. He said the key difference between a Marvel film and an award-winning one is budget, not artistic process, and he insisted Marvel films are still "real art".

  Holland calls himself a private person, and he suffers frequent sleepwalking and sleep paralysis nightmares in which paparazzi stand in his bedroom. He supports the football club Tottenham Hotspur. In 2017 he appeared with Zendaya on Paramount Network's Lip Sync Battle, performing Rihanna's "Umbrella" in drag. In November 2021 he confirmed that he had been in a relationship with Zendaya, his Spider-Man co-star. He later said the constant media attention breached their privacy. The couple moved into a £3 million home in London in 2023 and became engaged in December 2024. At the 32nd Actor Awards in March 2026, the stylist Law Roach claimed they were secretly married, which prompted artificially made images of a wedding ceremony to spread across social media.

  Dry January in 2022 turned into a lasting change. Feeling dependent on alcohol in social situations, Holland has been teetotal ever since. In October 2024 he launched a low-alcohol beer brand, and in a 2025 interview he said he has ADHD.

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• 8. Against Type

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  Antonio Campos directed The Devil All the Time, a Netflix psychological thriller set after World War II. In it, Holland and his Avengers co-star Sebastian Stan appear in a story where Holland plays a young orphaned man who goes on a killing spree. Holland feared he lacked the depth for the part and was scared and nervous on his first day. Campos encouraged him, and he ended up enjoying the work, though it took a temporary toll on his mental health. Campos praised his effort to learn Southern American English and called his process "methodical", "thoughtful and sensitive". Critics at IndieWire and Roger Ebert's website felt he was convincing despite a failed script. By November 2020, a Variety report ranked the film as the 22nd-most watched straight-to-streaming title of the year.

  Cherry, a crime drama based on Nico Walker's 2018 novel, reunited Holland with the Russo brothers. He played a college student who develops post-traumatic stress disorder after enlisting in the army and robs banks to pay for a drug addiction. For the role, Holland shaved his head and interviewed military veterans undergoing treatment for substance abuse and PTSD. He lost 30 lb and regained it after filming. The film reached cinemas in February 2021 and Apple TV+ in March. Owen Gleiberman of Variety said it showed Holland's skill and a range of moods, though critics found the story formulaic.

  Chaos Walking paired Holland with Daisy Ridley on a planet called New World, in an adaptation of Patrick Ness's science fiction series. Reshoots in early 2019 added $15 million to the budget, bringing the cost to $100 million. The film failed to recoup that money and drew poor reviews. Christian Holub of Entertainment Weekly noted that Holland had failed to break away from roles similar to Spider-Man.

  In 2022, Holland played a young Nathan Drake in Uncharted, a film adaptation of the Naughty Dog video game series. To prepare for bartending scenes, he worked shifts at the Chiltern Firehouse in London. Critics were divided. Rebecca Rubin of Variety wrote that his star power likely helped the box office. Brian Tallerico of Roger Ebert's website thought him miscast, saying he "has the agility but quite simply lacks the weight and world-weariness needed".

  Holland executive produced and starred in The Crowded Room, a 2023 Apple TV+ miniseries inspired by the 1981 non-fiction book The Minds of Billy Milligan. He played a character based on Billy Milligan. Reviews were negative, and Bob Strauss of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "another one of Tom Holland's 'serious' projects that's hard to take seriously". Even so, Holland earned a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination. He said the role was too emotionally taxing and that he would take a year off to recover. In May 2024 he returned to the stage as Romeo in Jamie Lloyd's West End revival of Romeo and Juliet, which ran for twelve weeks to mixed reviews.

  Later in 2024, Holland created a production company called Billy17 and landed a deal with Sony Pictures. His next big part is in Christopher Nolan's film of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey. In 2025 he called it the best experience of his career, saying, "I came to work every day with a real sense of purpose and a point to prove." A fourth Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, is next. In September 2025 he was briefly hospitalised with a concussion while filming it, and production paused.

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