Ever since web-slinging his way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
Tom Holland has captured the hearts of fans around the world as their friendly neighborhood
Spider-Man. But despite his fame, he isn't necessarily the most public celebrity around.
Here's what you never knew about Tom Holland.
Many fans are familiar with Tom Holland's career in Hollywood. He first gained
attention in 2012's The Impossible, and later landed the coveted role of Peter
Parker in the enormous Spider-Man franchise. But even before that, this Marvel star cut his
teeth performing in front of live audiences in Billy Elliot: The Musical on London's West End.
His journey to the stage actually began very young, and it all started with a Janet Jackson
song. According to GQ, his mother spotted him dancing, quote, "in a reasonably coordinated way"
and enrolled him in a dance class. Tom explained in an interview for the West End Theater:
"We did a show in White Lodge, the ballet school, and the headmaster,
he spotted me and he was like, 'We want you to audition for Billy Elliot."
In addition to dance, Holland's extensive ballet training taught him how to, quote,
"emote in different ways that aren't crying or laughing." He later told GQ:
"Ballet is the Latin of dance. Every piece of dance has come from ballet. To come from
that background has allowed me to express myself in different ways. For instance,
in the Spider-Man suit, you often can't see his face. But I find a way to convey feeling anyway."
Though dance introduced him to the performing arts and ultimately led
Tom Holland to superstardom, it also introduced him to bullies.
In a 2019 GQ interview, Holland described his secondary school days at Wimbledon College:
"I would do it in the school gym at lunchtimes by myself, in tights, with a teacher.
So you have kids looking through the windows. To a bunch of 10-year-olds who all play rugby,
Tom Holland doing ballet in the gym isn't that cool."
But the young multi-talent wasn't about to let bullies change who he was.
Holland went on to study drama at the esteemed BRIT School, according to The Scotsman.
Speaking to People in 2017, Holland admitted:
"I had my rough patches, But you couldn't hit me hard enough to stop me from doing it."
In fact, some of his experiences in school helped him relate to the character that
would turn him into a household name years down the road. Holland added:
"I, like Peter [Parker], accepted I wasn't the cool kid at school
and just found my group of friends and got on with it."
While performing the role of Billy Elliot in the acclaimed musical,
Tom Holland became quite a skilled gymnast. In an interview for the West End Theatre,
a young Holland described what interested him about acrobatics:
"Most ballet classes ... it's very strict. In acro, we can just
do what we want, muck around a bit."
Through the years, Holland kept up his acrobatic training — and it came in handy
when the opportunity to audition for Spider-Man came around. The actor told the Associated Press.:
"I always wanted to play this character, and, when I found out they were recasting the role, I rang
up my agent. ... They gave me two scenes. ... And I basically did like a somersault into frame and
then a somersault out of frame because I basically thought, 'They may never see this, but if they do,
I need them to know that I've got some gymnastics abilities and stuff.' And every tape I sent in,
I always did a little acrobatic demo to try and convince them to give me the role."
It definitely appears that Holland's "stunt" paid off.
Many actors undertake strange projects to get into character for a film. When Tom Holland
first nabbed the role of Peter Parker for Captain America: Civil War, he jokingly suggested that
he attend high school in the United States to learn what it's like to be an American teenager.
To his surprise, the team at Marvel jumped at the idea. He explained on The Graham Norton Show:
"Six weeks later, I'm with a backpack, pencil case,
books, on my way to ... The Bronx School of Science, which is a school for genius kids."
Holland was given a false identity, a backstory, his own student card, and even spoke with an
American accent. According to Inside Edition, during his three-day stint at the school,
none of his classmates caught on. In the end, he revealed his identity to the school's drama class.
When Tom Holland was 18 and coming off the massive Ron Howard blockbuster In The
Heart of the Sea, he was feeling quite confident about his career prospects.
But to his surprise, the roles didn't come right away. He told GQ Style:
"I was auditioning, auditioning, auditioning, and I just hit a bit of a rut. And I think,
personally, and this is me being very honest, I had just done a Ron Howard film,
and I thought I was dog's bollocks. I just thought, I'll get this job,
I'll get this job. And I didn't. It was a bit of a punch in the teeth."
Like any concerned parent, Holland's mother eventually insisted that he
develop a backup plan for his future. According to Holland,
"My mum said, 'Look, you're not getting any work,
so you need to go and have a plan B. I've booked you at this carpentry school in Cardiff.
Six-week course. You're gonna go, you're gonna learn to be a carpenter.'"
"This was after I thought I was doing pretty good. And mum was like 'no.'"
The tactic worked. Holland ended up landing four straight auditions while
in carpentry school ... all while learning how to fit a roof and renovate a bathroom.
Even before he entered the spotlight, Tom Holland knew of the potential pitfalls of being an actor.
He was warned about the pressures and the dark delights Hollywood can offer. In 2012,
as his impressive performance in The Impossible made waves, he spoke to The Hollywood Reporter.
"I think, from every actor I've ever spoken to, they say the biggest thing they regret from life
is not finishing school. So finishing school is something that is very important to me."
Holland even spoke with Drew Barrymore, the one-time poster
child for unconventional kid stars. He explained:
"She went through a very rough time. There is something quite worrying about it — the
whole sort of, 'What's going to happen to me in the next couple
of years.' But I'm pretty certain that I'll remain the same person."
Years later, Holland admitted that when he was younger,
he could never relate to stars like Barrymore. He said to GQ:
"I never understood when you watch, like,
young celebrities go off the rails. I'm like, Why do you do that? Just chill and be cool."
But that was before he became Spider-Man. Holland added:
"It wasn't until I felt the pressure of, like, 'Is that person taking a picture of me?'"
That made him realize his private life was shrinking. Thankfully,
he had friends who overcame those same struggles and could teach him to
cope — people like Drew Barrymore, Zendaya, and Robert Downey Jr.
Tom Holland isn't shy about telling the world he has dyslexia. The British actor
has discussed his learning disorder a number of times, including an endearingly botched Marvel
quiz livestream in April 2020. Holland explained to the 140,000 live viewers:
"We wrote down some cards so that we could show them up. What we didn't realize is that,
on an Instagram live, it flips it around. And I'm dyslexic, and it took me so long to write
them this way. There's no way I'm going to be able to write them backwards in time, so I apologize."
But Holland is not alone. According to Dyslexia Help at the University of Michigan,
not only is dyslexia one of the most common learning disabilities, it's one of the best
understood. Yet, not everyone in the Marvel star's family is convinced of his disorder.
In fact, Tom's father, comedian-author Dominic Holland, isn't on board with his diagnosis,
writing in a 2014 blog post that while he didn't, quote, "resent" it — if only
because it helped Tom discover dance — he didn't necessarily believe it either. Dominic continued:
"Being truthful, I was never happy with the diagnosis. I have never
been comfortable with saying that my son has the condition. I just
believe that some kids have an issue with literacy ... and that these anomalies are
normal and do not need labels or to be explained away by bodies of experts."
Tom Holland and his co-star Zendaya have dodged romance rumors for years,
but in the summer of 2019, the British actor got a rude awakening to the realities of
dating in the limelight. Less than a month after he told Elle that he was, quote,
"definitely a relationship person," he was spotted with a mystery blonde woman — and the
rumor mill went bananas. Soon after, Page Six learned and published the young woman's name,
something Holland wasn't thrilled about. He told GQ:
"I don't like living in the spotlight. It's the first time something like this has ever really
happened to me. So it's a bit of a shock to the system. Um, but you know, but it's something that
you look at and you go, 'Oh, well, I just don't put myself in that situation again.'"
Despite those words, Holland was back in that situation less than a year later. This time,
however, he leaned into the public romance. In May 2020, it was revealed that Holland
and actress Nadia Parkes were in a relationship and quarantining together. Since then, the two
have made their romance public, even sharing pictures of each other on social media. Aww.
When the Netflix thriller The Devil All the Time was released in September 2020, people began
raving about Tom Holland's performance. While the role was entirely different from anything
else the young actor has done, he actually got the part years before his worldwide fame.
According to Vanity Fair, director Antonio Campos began working on the movie in 2015,
five years before it was released. This was also when he cast Holland — before he ever
donned his first set of red and blue tights in Captain America: Civil War. Campos got
to watch as his virtually unknown lead actor became one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.
Not everyone on the film was paying attention to Holland's rising star,
however. Holland told Entertainment Weekly:
"When Jake [Gyllenhaal] and I were working together on Spidey 2, he was asking me what
I was going to do next. I pitched him this movie [The Devil All the Time] and he was like,
'Wait a minute, I'm producing that movie.' And I was like, 'Well, I'm in that movie.' I guess
someone had like messed up in the email and didn't tell us that each of us were part of the film."
Considering the fact that his first solo outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
Spider-Man: Homecoming, beat out the likes of Wonder Woman to become the
highest-grossing superhero movie of 2017, it's no surprise that Tom Holland saw
a major pay increase through his first three Marvel performances.
Holland was paid a reported $250,000 for his short stint in Captain America: Civil War,
and twice that much for Spider-Man: Homecoming. By comparison, his mentor Robert Downey Jr. scored $5
million a day for three days' work on Homecoming, adding up to just eight minutes of screen time as
Tony Stark. By the time 2018's Avengers: Infinity War rolled around, Holland nabbed an estimated $3
million. Throw in contractual bonuses and earnings from other onscreen gigs,
and Celebrity Net Worth estimates the British actor's net worth in 2020 at $15 million.
However, Holland seems to be relatively frugal with his earnings. He's amassed
an impressive collection of Spider-Man merch, he once splurged on a motorbike,
and he lives in a London flat not far from where he grew up.
In the meantime, he's keeping his eye on the acting prize, telling Interview Magazine in 2017:
"The 20-year goal is to be a film director. The 15-year goal is to win an Oscar. The five-year
goal is to just keep enjoying myself. I really am having the time of my life."
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