Tom Hollander just shared one of the “very difficult” complications that comes with having a similar name to one of the most famous young actors on the planet.
As I’m very sure you know, there is another man in Hollywood by the name of Tom Holland. Born and raised in London, he rose to international fame when he was cast as Spider-Man at the age of 19.
Since his Spidey debut in Captain America: Civil War in 2016, Holland has played the iconic superhero in five other movies, and his career has flourished with a ton of other roles outside of Marvel too.
To put it into perspective, Holland appears in three of the top 10 highest grossing movies of all time. So, in other words, he’s already earned some seriously big checks throughout his career.
And while Tom Hollander is a successful actor too — known for roles in The White Lotus and Pirates of the Caribbean — it’s no surprise that he continually finds himself getting confused for his fellow Brit. And he recently revealed that one of their mix-ups involved a pretty substantial sum of money.
During an appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers this week, the host addressed “the elephant in the room” and they began talking about what it’s like to share a similar name with someone so “enormously famous.”
After recalling the chaos of being introduced to people’s “very excited, then very confused and disappointed children,” Hollander said that the confusion was at its worst when the two of them shared an agency.
“People in the accounts department of my agency got confused,” he said. “It was a terrible moment.”
“I went to see my friend who was doing theater in England. I sat smugly in the audience just having done a BBC show for £30,000,” he remembered, before revealing that he got a very intriguing message during the interval.
“I checked my email and I got one from the agency saying, ‘Payment slip for your first box office bonus for The Avengers,” he recalled, apparently thinking to himself, “I don’t think I’m in The Avengers?”
When he opened the email, he was met with what he described as “an astonishing amount of money” intended for Mr. Holland.
“It was not his salary,” he said. “It was his first box office bonus. Not the whole box office bonus, the first one. And it was more money than I’d ever [seen]. It was a seven-figure sum.”
He then joked that the Spider-Man actor was “about 20 or something,” at the time of the mix-up. As it stands, Holland hasn’t commented on the hilarious story, which has sparked a lot of amusement among fans.
Last night, when asked about the story at the premiere of his upcoming series, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, Hollander shared more about the devastation he experienced after realizing there had been a mistake with the check.
“I felt utterly crushed when I saw how much money he was earning,” the actor joked, before praising the 27-year-old, who he said might want to send him some “Spider-Man money” after hearing about the debacle.
“God bless him, he’s brilliant,” he said.
