8 Facts About Tom Holland That Have Nothing To Do With Spider-Man

He was a trained ballet dancer years before he was Spider-Man

Holland started ballet, tap, and gymnastics lessons at age nine after a choreographer spotted him in a local dance class. Two years of training won him the title role in Billy Elliot the Musical on London's West End, where he performed from 2008 to 2010.

He landed Spider-Man partly by doing an unplanned backflip

During his Spider-Man audition, a casting director told Holland, "I legally can't ask you to do a backflip because you're not insured — but I'm not going to tell you not to." Holland did one anyway, mid-scene, causing co-star Chris Evans to forget his own line. Director Jon Watts later said it was "like watching a video of the real Peter Parker."

His dance and gymnastics training let him do most of his own Spider-Man stunts

Holland has said he performed "as many [stunts] as I could" across the Spider-Man trilogy, including pole-vaulting in Far From Home, swinging through New York with Zendaya in No Way Home, and climbing a Washington Monument replica in Homecoming — all easier for him thanks to his ballet and acrobatics background.

Marvel wrote him a fake script for Avengers: Endgame

After Holland spoiled several plot points in past interviews, directors Joe and Anthony Russo put him on an informal "blacklist." For Avengers: Endgame, Holland reportedly didn't receive the real screenplay at all — just his own lines — while other cast members got real pages. For Infinity War, the Russos have said they wrote him an entirely fake version of the script.

He has dyslexia, and it's why he keeps turning down hosting Saturday Night Live

Holland was diagnosed with dyslexia at age seven. He's since explained that while he reads fine silently, reading unfamiliar material aloud in front of a live audience is genuinely difficult for him — which he's cited as the reason he's turned down multiple invitations to host SNL.

He co-founded a family charity with his three brothers

In 2017, Holland's parents helped establish The Brothers Trust with Tom and his three younger brothers, Sam, Harry, and Paddy. The charity directs fundraising toward smaller, effective nonprofits that struggle to get attention in a crowded charitable sector.

He lost around 27 pounds on a brutal crash regimen for Cherry

To play a character spiraling into opioid addiction in the Russo brothers' Cherry, Holland dropped roughly 27 pounds in about ten weeks, then had to regain it for later scenes on a tight independent-film schedule. He's since described the process as genuinely dangerous and said it changed his relationship with food — not something he'd want to put his body through again.