What’s in a name? A superhero-sized bonus
Tom Hollander recounts error that sent him a hefty payslip meant for the star of the Spider-man films
‘I was here first, but he’s enormously famous. In non-visual contexts I get mistaken for him all the time’
‘It was not his salary. Not the whole box office bonus. And it was more money than I’d ever seen’
TOM HOLLANDER revealed he was accidentally paid a seven-figure bonus intended for fellow actor, Tom Holland.
The Bafta winner shared a story about how an identity mix up led to him mistakenly receiving one of the Spider-man star’s pay cheques for an Avengers film.
Asked by Seth Meyers, host of Late Night, whether the two British actors get confused for one another, he said: “It’s been very difficult, because you know I was here first, but he’s enormously famous. I obviously don’t actually get mistaken for him, but in non-visual contexts I get mistaken for him all the time.”
Hollander explained that the accounting error happened during a short period when the two men shared the same agency. He told Meyers how he had received the mistaken seven-figure bonus intended for the Marvel star, 27, over email while he was watching his friend act in a play in London for £300 a week.
“I sat smugly in the audience having just done a BBC show for 30 grand or something which was going to get me through the next year or so, and I was thinking, ‘Well this is marvellous, I’m very prosperous’,” he said.
But when he decided to check his emails in the interval, the 56-year-old discovered the message with Holland’s payslip in it – labelled as the first tranche of a “box office bonus” for starring in The Avengers.
Hollander said it was “an astonishing amount of money”, explaining: “It was not his salary. 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.”
“My feeling of smugness disappeared,” the actor added.
Holland is one of the biggest stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has portrayed Peter Parker – or Spider-man – in six Marvel films, including Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-man: Far From Home, and Spider-man: No Way Home. He won the Bafta Rising Star award in 2017 and has been dating Euphoria and Dune star Zendaya after they met on the set of the Marvel film Spider-man: Homecoming in 2016.
Hollander said that he also sometimes gets introduced to “excited, then confused, then disappointed children” who probably expected to meet the Marvel superhero after hearing his name.
The British actor, who won a Bafta award in 2017 for best supporting actor in The Night Manager series, appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers to promote his forthcoming series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, in which he plays the American writer Truman Capote.
Hollander has previously starred as Lord Cutler Beckett in Pirates of the Caribbean, and as Quentin in the second season of The White Lotus.
Holland, meanwhile, is expected to return to Marvel for a fourth Spider-man film at some point in the future. The media franchise, which creates superhero films, has so far remained quiet on Holland’s future roles, but the actor said last year that he would only move forward with the idea if it would do his character justice.
He said: “All I can say is that we have been actively engaging in conversations about what it could potentially look like for a fourth rendition of my character. Whether or not we can find a way to do justice to the character is another thing.”
The actor continued that he feels “very protective over Spider-man” and that he wants to “protect his legacy” instead of just making another movie “for the sake of making another one.”
Representatives for Tom Holland have been approached by The Telegraph for comment.