From Spinning Boy To Spider-Man: The Spectacular Transformation Of Tom Holland

Even if you're a total Marvel obsessive, there's probably a lot you don't know about Tom Holland. These days, it's impossible to think of Holland without imagining his work as Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and because of that, it's easy to forget that he's a relative newcomer to the franchise. Holland joined the MCU in the back half, and he's got a whole life outside of Marvel.

Holland grew up in England, and from a very young age, he knew he was going to be a performer. He debuted in a West End production of "Billy Elliot the Musical" when he was just 12 years old, and at that moment, it seemed like his whole life was about to change. "[I thought] I was going to be the coolest kid in school!" Holland told The Times when reflecting on his childhood. "But it wasn't the case." Instead, Holland faced bullies who made fun of his passion for singing, dancing, and performing.

Well, no one's laughing now. Holland's one of the most recognizable stars in the world, and he's been the driving force behind some of the best Spider-Man movies that comic book fans have ever gotten to see. His transformation has certainly been more of a marathon than a sprint, and when you look back, it's amazing to see just how far he's come.

Tom Holland doesn't exactly fit the stereotypical image of a child star, but in reality, he's been performing for his entire life. The real difference is just that when Holland was still a little kid, he spent his time on stage instead of in front of a camera. His acting journey actually began when he was a very young child learning how to dance at a Wimbledon-based studio called Nifty Feet.

Holland was just 10 years old when he had his first big break. He was performing in a dance show when he was spotted by talent scouts. They were looking to cast a kid about his age in "Billy Elliot the Musical." The scouts were impressed by Holland's dance performance, but he didn't immediately land a role in the show. He went to multiple auditions over the course of two years before being offered a supporting role in the summer of 2008. Holland made his West End debut playing Billy Elliot's best friend Michael in June 2008, and just a couple months later he was offered the lead role. Holland continued playing Billy until May 2010, and after that, it wasn't long before he pivoted to working on the big screen.

After leaving the cast of "Billy Elliot the Musical" in 2010, Tom Holland didn't immediately jump into another stage production. In fact, for the next two years his only role was an uncredited vocal performance in the English dub of the Studio Ghibli movie "The Secret World of Arrietty." Holland made his feature film debut in the 2012 movie "The Impossible," which told the fictionalized story of a family stuck in Thailand during the devastating 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Holland's work on that particular project actually began while he was still playing Billy Elliot.

In an interview with Celebs.com, Holland explained that "The Impossible" director J.A. Bayona saw an interview he'd given while he was still part of "Billy Elliot." Bayona reached to him and the two met while she was visiting London. She offered Holland the part of the main family's eldest son Lucas, and he got to experience a whole new kind of acting while filming on location in Thailand. "It was one of those things where the acting wasn't really required," Holland said, "because at times I was genuinely scared." Holland was nominated for multiple Best Young or New Actor awards after appearing in "The Impossible," and though he didn't know it at the time, facing his fear of the water would come in handy years later, when he battled a water monster in "Spider-Man: Far From Home."

As a kid, Tom Holland spent years working his way toward playing Billy Elliot. He was nearly 20 years old by the time he took a swing at the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but despite having much more experience as an actor, Holland was still utterly unprepared for the grueling Spider-Man audition process.

"It's weird," Holland told Daniel Kaluuya when the two of them sat down for an "Actors on Actors" segment with Variety. "The audition process was horrible. It was seven months of auditioning. I must've done six auditions, and they don't tell you anything." Two of those auditions had Holland reading lines alongside established Marvel stars like Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans. Holland said that he felt pretty good about most of his interviews, but he wasn't exaggerating in the slightest when he said that nobody told him anything.

There's a decent chance that if you're a hardcore MCU fan, you knew about Holland's casting before he did. The actor told Kaluuya that he found out he'd gotten the part when he searched for Marvel news on Google at his house. "I've still got the article saved on my computer ... I broke my computer, because I flipped it up in the air." He got the official call not long after making the discovery on his own, and it's something he'll never forget. "It's been crazy, mate," Holland said. "I've loved every minute of it."

Tom Holland got ripped to play Spider-Man, but he had a bit of a head start compared to some of his other Marvel costars. Long before playing Spider-Man was even a possibility for Holland, he was being professionally trained in dance. The fact that Holland wasn't just a charismatic actor but also extremely capable at performing complicated choreography — including doing an unassisted standing backflip — played a huge role in him landing the part as Spider-Man.

Of course, once Holland was cast as the Webhead, he couldn't just rely on his past experience to carry him through the work. His superhero training regimen involved a huge variety of workouts, including circuit exercises and weight training. Holland also had to learn more about fighting, and he trained as a boxer to help him perfect Spidey's hand-to-hand combat skills. He even pursued some more experimental routes to superpowered fitness, like exercising while hooked up to an Electronic Muscle Stimulation machine that supposedly increases the effectiveness of your workouts by stimulating your muscles with electricity. When it came to physically transforming himself into Marvel's greatest hero, Holland pulled out all the stops, and his Spider-Man physique in the movies shows how effective his approach really was.

Even after becoming Spider-Man, Tom Holland's passion for acting drove him to continue pursuing new roles, and Holland kept an eye out for ways he could push himself forward as an actor. Since his first appearance as Spider-Man in 2016, Holland has played over a dozen other characters, and though some of them, like Nathan Drake in "Uncharted," don't stray too far from the Peter Parker/Spider-Man persona, others have really required Holland to stretch his skills.

Holland really avoided being typecast when he played Arvin, a man raised in a small town who finds himself driven to violence by dark circumstances in the movie "The Devil All the Time." Holland told Variety that the role made him more nervous than just about anything he'd played before. "I didn't know if I had it in me to play this type of character," he said, adding, "He is a really complicated character and it is very dark, and I had to go to places mentally that I didn't know I could go to or don't think I ever want to go to again." That movie wasn't particularly well-received when it debuted, but something about the film must have inspired Holland to continue pursuing darker characters, because years later he played another troubled and violent man in the Apple TV+ series "The Crowded Room."

It probably isn't too surprising to learn that someone who plays a superhero as idealistic as Spider-Man also has a passion for helping people out in the real world. When he's not busy acting, Tom Holland is the face of a charity organization called The Brothers Trust. The group was actually created by Holland's parents, Nikki and Dominic, and its goal is to shine a light on small charities that would normally struggle for mainstream publicity and big-dollar donors.

The Brothers Trust has worked with more than a dozen charitable organizations across the world. The Trust has mostly focused on raising money for various programs that help kids and young people, whether that's delivering medical care to those in need or providing food to communities that have fallen on hard times.

In some ways, Holland views his work with The Brothers Trust as an integral part of playing Spider-Man. While speaking with The Times, Holland said that he's acutely aware of how many young fans Spider-Man has, so he feels like he has a certain responsibility to them. "I try to be someone they aspire to be," Holland said.

As you might imagine, becoming part of the MCU can completely change a person's life. Tom Holland was never the same after playing Spider-Man, and the role changed his day-to-day existence in countless ways, big and small. If you asked Holland to list the biggest changes Spider-Man brought him, he'd probably put meeting Zendaya near the top.

Holland and Zendaya met when they were cast in "Spider-Man: Homecoming," and almost instantly, the internet started buzzing with rumors that they were dating. The two do their best to keep their personal lives private, but when paparazzi got a picture of them kissing in 2021, their relationship became official. Since then, they haven't tried to hide their relationship, and the two of them have been photographed together much more often, speaking publicly about dating and living together.

The relationship between Holland and Zendaya developed right alongside the relationship between their characters Peter and MJ in the "Spider-Man" movies. "Spider-Man: No Way Home" threw a wrench into that fictional relationship when a spell caused MJ to forget Peter even exists, but that seemingly had no effect on the couple in real life. In September 2024, an anonymous source told Life & Style that Holland and Zendaya were privately working on plans to get married.

From the moment he was cast as Spider-Man, Tom Holland has been working non-stop. Between 2016 and 2021, the entire Spider-Man MCU story spanned six movies, including three where Spidey himself was the main character. All of Holland's work culminated in 2021's "Spider-Man: No Way Home," which brought back some fan-favorite Spider-Man actors and offered something of a soft reset for Holland's version of the character.

At that point, Holland decided to take a step back and enjoy a little bit of a break from being one of Marvel's leading men. Just a month ahead of the "No Way Home" release, Holland spoke with GQ about his decision to take a break, saying, "Being Spider-Man is more of a responsibility than just having a job." Holland said that when he considered the possibility of putting that responsibility down for a while, "It's kind of terrifying, but it's also really exciting."

Holland didn't just step away from the MCU. He also slowed down his film work in general. Since 2022, he has starred in only two movies, "Uncharted" and "Last Call," and a single TV series. Holland told GQ he saw the Spider-Man break as a chance to prove to himself and the world that he could be a leading man without wearing a supersuit — but of course, he didn't plan on leaving behind the mask forever.

In the summer of 2023, Tom Holland's fans got to see a side of him that they never knew existed. Holland went on Jay Shetty's podcast for a wide-ranging interview that touched on Holland's childhood, love of sports, acting inspirations, and struggles with dyslexia. During the interview, Holland also opened up about the fact that he had struggled with alcoholism and made the incredibly difficult decision to get sober.

Shetty brought up the fact that he knew Holland had quit drinking about a year and a half before the interview, and Holland decided to get real about his motivation for making the change. Holland said that after spending a December drinking more heavily than usual, he decided to try "dry January," and pretty quickly he noticed a problem. "All I could think about was having a drink," Holland said. "I was waking up thinking about it. I was checking the clock, 'When's it twelve?' And it just really scared me."

From there Holland decided that he should push himself and continue not drinking through February. He still kept thinking about drinking, so he decided to extend his personal deadline to his birthday in June to prove to himself he didn't have a problem. "By the time I had got to June 1, I was the happiest I'd ever been in my life," Holland said. He was sleeping better, dealing with stress more easily, and felt all around more relaxed. Getting to that point was a serious struggle, but since then, he hasn't looked back.

Most actors tend to move between different forms of media, going from the movies to TV to the theater and back again. Tom Holland is a little different in that regard because after making the move from "Billy Elliot the Musical" to the feature film "The Impossible," he has acted almost exclusively in movies. That changed in 2023, when Holland joined the cast of the Apple TV+ series "The Crowded Room."

In the series, Holland played Danny Sullivan, a young man who gets arrested after being involved in a shooting. Danny is too complicated of a character to be a straightforward villain, but he's a darker character than any that Holland had played in the past. Delving into Danny's emotional depths was a whole new level of acting challenge that Holland wasn't quite prepared for. He really struggled while working on "The Crowded Room," and that's not something he's been shy about sharing.

"The show did break me," Holland told USA Today. Apparently during the production, Holland took off to Mexico for a week to give himself a break from the pressure. After getting through the series, he decided that he needed to take a full year off from acting. Holland already had future roles lined up, but after the darkness of "The Crowded Room," he needed to reset before actively diving into those projects.

Tom Holland took a break from Spider-Man after filming "No Way Home," but as he began preparing to return to the character, he found that his relationship to the franchise had changed pretty dramatically. When Holland first got the role, he'd gone through months of auditions and was joining a film franchise that already had a multi-year roadmap planned out for it. But in the post-"No Way Home" era, Holland isn't just along for the ride anymore.

As Marvel began making its plans for a fourth Spider-Man movie, Holland was able to truly get in on the ground floor and help develop the concept for the film. "This is the first time in this process that I've been part of the creative [sic] so early. It's just a process where I'm watching and learning," Holland told Deadline. Now he's approaching the movie as an established actor playing a beloved character — he's less of a starry-eyed kid and more of a protective dad now. "We have a legacy to protect," Holland said while explaining his cautious approach with the new film. "The third movie was so special in so many ways that we need to make sure we do the right thing." Who knows what this new approach will mean for the story of the inevitable "Spider-Man 4," but one thing is certain: Fans are going to be giddy to see what Holland helped dream up for the Webhead.