Tom Holland Reveals His Secret To Acting In The Spider-Man Costume
Actors and superhero costumes: a tale as old as time.
It seems that every big-name movie star to don a cape, mask, or cowl over the years has had some form of difficulty or crazy story to tell about their cinematic threads. The most famous was perhaps George Clooney and his 90-pound Batman suit, which he once described as being almost impossible to move in. "They put you on a flat board, lie you on the ground and bolt you into this thing, and then they just pull the board out and leave you standing," Clooney explained during a 2014 Reddit AMA (via UPROXX). "Joel Schumacher goes action, I say 'I'm Batman' and then, cut, they drop me back down on the board and leave me on my back."
Additionally, former "Spider-Man" actor Andrew Garfield once complained about his suit revealing too much of his nether regions. "The whole point of wearing a mask is you feel free and you can be whatever you want and you can be witty," he told Ellen DeGeneres in 2012 (via Digital Spy). "That was the whole point — Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man and he becomes this other ego, his alter-ego. But knowing that your keister has been shot from many different angles makes you very uncomfortable."
Garfield's successor, Tom Holland, has had some difficulties of his own portraying Marvel's resident web-slinger. But the actor says he's figured out a way to curtail them.
Holland uses 'crazy arms' technique while acting as Spider-Man
When Tom Holland first began playing Spider-Man, he had to find a way to portray all of his emotions while having his face completely covered by a mask. Since Spidey is an animated character, Holland was forced to deploy a technique that can only be described in the simplest of terms — crazy arms.
"As an actor you use expression with your face to convey emotion, and when you take that away you have to figure out how to do it with your physicality," Holland told Sean Evans of "Hot Ones." "So if you took off the Spider-Man suit, and I behaved the way I would while in the suit, you'd think I was a crazy person and acting way too much and too big. But cover up your face — all of a sudden those bigger reactions feel normal. My secret weapon is that I will always pretend like my arms are dead so that when I move, my arms kind of swing around. So Peter Parker's hands are always doing the most crazy stuff. And for me, that has been a really good way of making him feel youthful, while also in moments of peril and stuff like that."
Holland further revealed that the mask can also have its benefits. "It's also sometimes a great thing," he told Evans. "Like if I've gone out the night before and had a little bit too much to drink, if I've got a mask on, no one knows. So it's fine!"