Tom Holland's career has seen more ups and downs than Spider-Man

Tom Holland's career has seen more ups and downs than Spider-Man swinging on a web across Manhattan. But has he finally reached a turning point? This is the history of Tom Holland. Tom Holland was born on June 1st, 1996, in Kingston upon Thames, in Southwest London. His mother, Nicola, is a photographer, and his father, Dominic, is a comedian and author. Holland traces back both Irish ancestry, as well as Manx lineage from the Isle of Man. At the age of seven, Holland was diagnosed with dyslexia, so his parents enrolled him in Donhead Preparatory School in the borough of Southwest London. Then Wimbledon College and finally, the Brit School of Performing Arts and Technology. As a small child, Holland loved two things: Spider-Man. He had dozens of Spider-Man costumes and bedsheets, and he loved dancing at home to Janet Jackson, so his mother decided to sign him up for dance classes. At the age of nine, he enrolled in his first hip-hop class at Nifty Feet Dance School in Wimbledon. His dance group then performed at the 2006 Richmond Dance Festival, and he was spotted by choreographer Lynne Page, who worked with Peter Darling, the choreographer for Billy Elliot the Musical, which had been running on the West End since 2005. Then spent two years learning tap, ballet, and acrobatics, and sadly, yes, his classmates did bully him for being a dancer. But then in 2008, at the age of 12, Holland was finally invited to join the cast of Billy Elliot, but not as Billy Elliot. At first, he was cast as Michael, Billy's best friend. Then later that year, he was promoted to being one of the rotating Billy Elliots. The night of his first show playing Billy, Tom actually got sick with tonsillitis, but he did the show anyway. He got positive reviews and went to the doctor the next day. Tom Holland stayed with Billy for two years and then landed his first film role. He voiced Sho in the UK dub of The Secret World of Arietty, and that same year, he sent in an audition tape for J.A. Bayona's upcoming film, The Impossible. Bayona was very impressed with Holland's emotional acting abilities, so he cast him as Lucas, the older son of the family centered in the film. Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor played Holland's parents in the movie, which was about a European family who became trapped in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The Impossible was a big challenge for Holland. First, he had to dial in his acting as he switched from theater to film and then there were the physical demands of this disaster movie. Watts had to shoot difficult scenes in a 35,000 gallon water tank. But watching Naomi Watts work, Tom Holland realized he wanted to make acting his career. The Impossible received positive reviews, grossed $180 million against a $45 million budget. The New York Times critic A.O. Scott called Tom Holland "a young actor," and he won the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance, as well as the London Film Critics Circle Award for Young British Performer of the Year. He then played a small role in the 2013 romantic sci-fi film How I Live Now, and lent his voice to the Tom Hardy road movie Locke. The year Tom Holland turned 19, what would then become the biggest year of his entire life. He made his TV debut in the BBC historical drama Wolf Hall. He directed a short film called Tweet. He appeared in Ron Howard's 1800s set whaling drama In the Heart of the Sea, another grueling shoot that required the entire cast to lose weight. That movie co-stars Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Ben Whishaw, and Brendan Gleeson, by the way. And then finally, 2015 was the year for Spider-Man. 1500 boys submitted for the role of Peter Parker in Sony and Marvel Studios' reboot of the character. The intention was for Spider-Man to first appear in the Russo Brothers' upcoming movie Captain America: Civil War. The finalists for the role were Holland, Asa Butterfield, Charlie Plummer, Matthew Lintz, and Judah Lewis. Holland and Butterfield were then the top choices, and they both did chemistry reads with Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans. Producers Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal were impressed with Holland's work in The Wolf Hall, of the Sea, and in the Heart of the Sea. The Russo Brothers said Holland's background in dance and gymnastics put him over the edge. Stan Lee later said Holland was Peter Parker's "exact age and height" when he created the character. Holland then signed a six-picture deal with Marvel and made his MCU debut in 2016's Captain America: Civil War. Critics and fans loved it. It grossed more than $1 billion, the biggest movie of 2016. The Guardian's critic called Holland "seductively high-spirited and hilarious," and Richard Roper said he made "a strong first impression as Spider-Man." But Holland wasn't done with 2016 yet. He then starred in Rob Connelly's thriller Edge of Winter with Joel Kinnaman. The movie got mixed reviews, but The Hollywood Reporter called him "excellent." That led to Holland winning the BAFTA Rising Star Award in February 2017. Tom Holland then appeared in a trio of smaller movies: James Gray's The Lost City of Z. Holland broke his nose while trying to do a backflip on set. There was The Current War, which was a big flop with critics and audiences, and then the Irish medieval film Pilgrimage, where Holland first met and befriended Jon Bernthal. The two of them became good friends on set and actually helped each other record their Spider-Man and Punisher auditions. The movie shot in 2015. But 2017 was also the year of Spider-Man: Homecoming. At 21, Holland broke a record as the youngest title character in any MCU movie. To prepare for the role, Holland observed classes at the Bronx High School of Science for a few days, and he said the students there didn't actually believe he was cast as Spider-Man. Homecoming was a critical and financial hit, and Peter Travers praised Holland's "star performance" as "a born actor." And oh yeah, 2017 was also the year of Tom Holland's umbrella performance on Lip Sync Battle. It was then all Spider-Man, all the time, over the next few years. Avengers: Infinity War 2018, Avengers: Endgame 2019, and Spider-Man: Far From Home 2019. That last one was the first Spider-Man movie to gross over $1 billion in 2019. In November of 2021, Holland and Zendaya confirmed they were dating. Then, after a number of production delays, Holland made the video game adaptation Uncharted. The part required him to do some bartending, so he picked up a few shifts at the Chiltern Firehouse pub in London. Uncharted was a modest success, $407 million against a $120 million budget, but critics weren't kind. 41% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critic Brian Talarico said Holland was "miscast in the movie." Then returned to TV in the Apple TV+ crime thriller The Crowded Room, in which he played a man with dissociative identity disorder. Critics and audiences were split on the show, and Holland found the role so emotionally draining that he took a year off from acting. In 2023, Holland revealed he had become sober after feeling dependent on alcohol, and then in 2024, he launched BERO, a nonalcoholic beer brand. That same year, a decade away, he returned to the stage in a West End production of Romeo and Juliet. Right on trend, theater critics were mixed on the revival and his performance, but he was about to step into a whole new era because he was cast in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Perhaps his most prestigious movie to date. And he started developing a fourth Spider-Man film, Brand New Day. Holland had a lot more control over this later Spider-Man movie, during its development, that he insisted that had to justify its existence with a strong story. They shot a lot of brand new stunts practically, and Holland was hospitalized after sustaining a concussion on set in September 2020. Both The Odyssey and Brand New Day landed in July of 2026, with a massive amount of fanfare and hype. The only thing bigger than their critic and audience scores are their box office numbers. Oh, and did he and Zendaya get married just before the release of those movies? So what's next for Tom Holland? He's currently in rehearsals on a Fred Astaire biopic with director Paul King, which seems like a brilliant use of all of his talents. And you can bet another Spider-Man will happen. So that's the history of Tom Holland. What would you like him to do next?