Thomas Stanley Holland (born 1 June 1996) is a British actor. His accolades include a BAFTA Award as well as two Critics' Choice Awards nominations. He is the highest-grossing actor of all time.
Holland's career began at age nine when he enrolled in a dancing class, where a choreographer noticed him and arranged for him to audition for a role in Billy Elliot the Musical at London's Victoria Palace Theatre. After two years of training, he was promoted to the lead role of Billy Elliot, which he played from 2008 to 2010. Holland made his film debut as a voice actor on the British dub of the Japanese animated film Arrietty (2011). He made his on-screen debut playing a tourist in the disaster drama The Impossible (2012), for which he received a London Film Critics Circle Award for Young British Performer of the Year. After this, Holland decided to pursue acting as a full-time career, appearing in How I Live Now (2013), In the Heart of the Sea (2015) and The Lost City of Z (2016).
Holland achieved international recognition playing Peter Parker/Spider-Man in seven Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) superhero films, beginning with Captain America: Civil War (2016). The following year, Holland received the BAFTA Rising Star Award and became the youngest actor to play a title role in an MCU film when he starred in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017). He reprised the role in the film's sequels Far From Home (2019), No Way Home (2021) and Brand New Day (2026). Holland played against-type roles in the crime dramas The Devil All the Time (2020) and Cherry (2021), and starred in the big-budget films Uncharted (2022) and The Odyssey (2026).
Holland had voice roles in the animated features Spies in Disguise (2019) and Onward (2020). On television, he had roles in the BBC historical miniseries Wolf Hall (2015) and the Apple TV+ psychological thriller limited series The Crowded Room (2023). He returned to the stage as Romeo in the West End revival of Romeo and Juliet (2024). Holland is married to Zendaya, his co-star in four Spider-Man films.
Thomas Stanley Holland was born on 1 June 1996 in Kingston upon Thames, in south-west London, to photographer Nicola (née Frost) and comedian-author Dominic Holland. He has three younger brothers. His paternal grandmother was from County Tipperary, Ireland and his paternal grandfather was from the Isle of Man. Holland lives in Kingston upon Thames, near the house of his parents and brothers. As his parents have creative professions, he is often inspired by them and considers his father a role model. His father has unofficially worked as Holland's manager due to his experience in the entertainment industry.
When Holland was seven, he was diagnosed with dyslexia. His parents sent him and his brothers to an all-male Catholic private school—Donhead Preparatory School in Wimbledon, in the Merton borough of south-west London—so Holland could receive special attention. Holland then attended Wimbledon College, a voluntary aided Jesuit secondary school, followed by the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in the Selhurst area of Croydon.
Growing up, Holland considered several career choices. As a child, he was a fan of Janet Jackson songs and often danced to them; his mother signed him up for a dance class advertised at Donhead. In his teens, Holland briefly attended carpentry school in Cardiff, Wales. He also considered becoming a primary school teacher.
2006–2014: Early stage work and film debut
At age nine, Holland began dancing in a hip hop class at Nifty Feet Dance School in Wimbledon, where he performed with his school group at the 2006 Richmond Dance Festival. There, he was spotted by choreographer Lynne Page, an associate of Peter Darling, choreographer of Billy Elliot the Musical. Page arranged an audition for Holland; the musical's director Stephen Daldry thought Holland had great potential and was a natural actor. After two years of training in ballet, tap dancing and acrobatics, Holland won the role of Michael Caffrey, Billy Elliot's best friend, and made his debut performance at the West End's Victoria Palace Theatre in June 2008. During his time performing in the musical, Holland learned gymnastics. Holland said that when his peers at school found out about his dancing activities, they started bullying him.
Later in 2008, Holland and co-star Tanner Pflueger were promoted to the lead role of Billy Elliot in the musical. On his first day playing Elliot, Holland developed tonsillitis but performed anyway to positive reviews. Following his stage success, Holland hoped to be popular in school and that his schoolmates would stop bullying him. After being in a professional environment, he matured earlier than his peers and struggled to fit in. As a result, his GCSE grades suffered. After his work on Billy Elliot finished in 2010, Holland voiced a role in the British dub of the Japanese animated fantasy film Arrietty (2011), and sent an audition tape to Juan Antonio Bayona for a part in The Impossible (2012). Bayona arranged a meeting, and had Holland write a letter to his mother and recite it as an audition. Impressed with his emotional delivery, Bayona cast Holland in the film.
In The Impossible, Holland plays a teenager trapped with his family during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Transitioning from stage to screen was initially difficult for Holland. He and his co-star Naomi Watts filmed physically and psychologically taxing scenes in a 35,000-gallon water tank. Working with Watts made Holland realise that he wanted to pursue an acting career permanently. The Impossible premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012 to critical and commercial success, earning $180.3 million against a budget of $45 million. Holland received critical acclaim for his performance and won several awards, including the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance and the London Film Critics Circle Award for Young British Performer of the Year. Following The Impossible, Holland appeared in the drama film How I Live Now (2013), lent his voice in a supporting role for the drama film Locke (2013), and had a cameo in Billy Elliot the Musical Live (2014).
2015–2017: Breakthrough as Spider-Man
Holland appeared in four episodes of BBC Two's historical mini series Wolf Hall (2015), as Gregory Cromwell, son of the protagonist Thomas Cromwell played by Mark Rylance. He directed Tweet (2015), a three-minute short film about a young man building a birdhouse with his grandfather; Holland later expressed an interest in directing feature films in his 40s. Also in 2015, Holland co-starred as the teenage sailor Thomas Nickerson in Ron Howard's historical adventure-drama In the Heart of the Sea. The film is based on the namesake 2000 non-fiction book about the sinking of the American whaling ship Essex in 1820. In preparation, he and co-stars, including Chris Hemsworth, lost significant weight, consuming 500–1,000 calories a day. Holland performed most of his stunts in the film. In the Heart of the Sea received mixed reviews from critics, and grossed $93 million against a $100 million budget. Brian Truitt of the USA Today wrote that Holland "does a good job".
In June 2015, Holland signed a six-picture deal with Marvel Studios to play a teenage Peter Parker / Spider-Man. Growing up, Holland was a fan of Spider-Man; he owned 30 costumes and bed sheet covers of the character. He auditioned against 1,500 teenagers worldwide, including English actors Charlie Rowe and Asa Butterfield. While producers Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal were impressed with his performances in The Impossible, Wolf Hall, and In the Heart of the Sea, directors the Russo brothers cited Holland's dancing and gymnastics background as the reasons to cast him. Stan Lee, Spider-Man's creator, said Holland was the "exact age and height" when he envisioned the character. As part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), he first appeared as Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War (2016). The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $1.1 billion worldwide against a budget of $250 million to become the highest-grossing film of 2016. In a review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw praised Holland and co-star Paul Rudd (who played Ant-Man) as "seductively high-spirited and hilarious", and Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-Times wrote that he made "a strong first impression" as Spider-Man.