Spider-Man puts on his top hat to play Astaire
Tom Holland reveals: I’ve landed role as legendary dancer
HE has only just taken off his SpiderMan outfit and put away his web slinger. Now Tom Holland is putting on his top hat, tying up his white tie and brushing off his tails.
The British actor has revealed he will play Hollywood singing and dancing legend Fred Astaire in a new film. It marks a return to his roots for Holland, 25, who made his West End debut as a 12-yearold in Billy Elliot: The Musical in 2008, quickly taking over the title role. As he and US actress Zendaya, his girlfriend and costar, promoted their latest action hero film Spider-Man: No Way Home, which opens next week, Holland said: ‘Oh, I am playing Fred Astaire. The script came in a week ago.’
There had been rumours that Sony producer Amy Pascal wanted him for the role in the biopic. Miss Pascal has the script, he added.
‘I haven’t read it yet. They haven’t given it to me. She FaceTimed me earlier. I was in the bath and we had a lovely FaceTime!’
Astaire, who was born in 1899, was one of the biggest stars in the pre-TV ‘golden age’ of Hollywood, most famously in partnership with Ginger Rogers. The duo starred in ten films together, starting with Flying Down to Rio in 1933 and including the musical comedies Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937). Considered the greatest dancer in movie history, Astaire began performing on stage aged six and had a career spanning 76 years. He announced his retirement in 1946, only to appear opposite Judy Garland in Easter Parade in 1948 and won rave reviews for The Band Wagon in 1953.
From the late Fifties, he took mainly acting roles in non-musicals. He appeared in disaster movie The Towering Inferno in 1974 and his final film was Ghost Story in 1981. Astaire died in 1987 aged 88, having always refused to let his life story be made into a film.
Holland is not the only Billy Elliot to be taking on the role of Astaire. Jamie Bell who played the lead in Stephen Daldry’s original 2000 coming-of-age film about a working-class boy with a passion for ballet, is to star as the Hollywood great in Fred & Ginger.
Bell, 35, will appear alongside Margaret Qualley, 27, as Miss Rogers in the biopic, which is being made by Amazon Studios.