Tom Holland

Tom Holland got the Spider-Man job at 19 by beating out more than 1,500 candidates, Timothée Chalamet reportedly among them. What made that possible was a stranger route: he'd spent years as a West End Billy Elliot, performing a gravity-defying backward flip up a wall with each show, which gave him the physicality that caught Marvel's eye. His film debut in The Impossible (2012) had already proven he could carry a lead opposite Naomi Watts, earning the National Board of Review's Breakthrough Performance award. Civil War made him a name. No Way Home made him a phenomenon.

His six MCU films have grossed over $9.9 billion worldwide, but the story that stuck was from when he stepped back. Filming The Crowded Room for Apple TV+ pushed him hard enough that he announced a year-long hiatus from acting. During that break, he went public about sobriety: a boozy December that led into a Dry January where all he could think about was his next drink. That scared him enough to quit entirely. Reports of an engagement to co-star Zendaya surfaced around the same period. They've kept the details to themselves, which, given the level of public attention, isn't surprising.

Before Spider-Man found him, Holland was planning to leave acting for carpentry. The career that followed came from a path he barely cleared: eight auditions, two years of ballet training he didn't have at the start, and a school environment where dancing made him a target. He showed up to his first performance as Billy Elliot with tonsillitis and performed anyway. His father, Dominic Holland, is a comedian and author, so the showbiz roots run deeper than the origin story implies.