Tom is featured in W Magazine’s annual Best Performances issue. Check out the photos in the gallery and read the interview below!

W MAGAZINE – Tom Holland had played Spider-Man in three different movies by the Russo brothers when the directors decided to change things up. For what would become the collaborators’ fourth film together, Cherry, the Russos proposed that Holland play a bank-robbing heroin addict. It was a break from the Marvel universe if ever there was one, and the 24-year-old seized his chance. For W’s annual Best Performances issue, Holland reflects on the evolution of his acting career.

What was the first thing you auditioned for?

When I was 8 or 9, I auditioned for every role in Romeo and Juliet, including Juliet, and I didn’t get a single part. When I was 11, I booked Billy Elliot; that was the first job I ever booked. I couldn’t dance, but trainers would come to my school and teach me at lunch. I was at a rugby school, so doing ballet in tights in the school gym wasn’t the coolest of things to do, but it paid off.

Early on, you played rugby. Do you still play?

No. Everyone grew and got really big, and I stayed really small. So I had to find a sport where I wasn’t getting battered all the time. Golf seemed like the most logical decision. I’ve probably been playing for about 10 years. I have more golf outfits than regular clothes.

What was the first movie that you booked?

The Impossible, which is a Juan Antonio Bayona film, and also the first audition I ever had for a film. It was an amazing experience. I got the chance to work with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. That was the first time I realized that I could be an actor and it was something that I could do for the rest of my life. I immediately fell in love with the idea of making movies, and was so lucky that afterward people really responded to the film.

In Cherry, you play a lovelorn soldier who becomes a drug addict and robs banks to pay for his heroin. What was the hardest part of portraying this character?

Physically and mentally, the dope life portion of the film is the most demanding. It was really hard to bounce between different versions of my character.

How did you first get involved with the film?

It’s directed by the Russo brothers, whom I’ve obviously worked with many times before in the Marvel universe. They took me aside and told me they were doing this small independent feature. I was really touched that, of all the people they could have worked with, they wanted me to play the lead. They’ve changed my life in so many different ways and continue to look after me, so I owe a lot to the Russos.

What’s the key to doing an American accent? Yours is remarkable in Cherry.

Just hard work, really. I’m very lucky. My dialect coach, Rick Lipton, who goes by Pretty Ricky, is one of my best mates. We’ve been working together for years now—I think we’re coming up on our 10th or 12th movie together. We just put the work in, practice, practice, practice, and get it done.
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Tom is on the new cover of Esquire for March. The photoshoot is amazing. You can check out the cover and photos from the shoot in the gallery. I will add scans when I get the issue.

ESQUIRE – In the late fall of 2019, Tom Holland was lying sideways on the floor of a jail cell, sweating, convulsing, throwing up blood. His rusty brown hair had been shaved off; his typically smiling eyes were sunken. Wearing a khaki prison uniform that hung loosely on his frame, he rocked back and forth on the floor, smacking his head against the cement a few times in the process. Then the directors called, “Cut!”

Holland, the twenty-four-year-old British actor best known as Marvel’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, the sweet-faced hero of the ever-expanding cinematic universe, was in character for Cherry, a forthcoming film in which he plays an Army medic who returns home from the Iraq war with undiagnosed PTSD, develops a heroin addiction, and starts robbing banks. After filming the scene that takes place in the jail, Holland was a little woozy but still pleased with his performance, so he did what any young person might in a moment of pride: He sent the footage of himself writhing around in the cell to his mother. “Biggest mistake ever,” he says now, grinning. “I was like, ‘This is how my day’s going,’ and she was furious with me.

“I guess I wasn’t thinking right, and I was like, ‘Do you know who would really like to see this? My mum.’ In hindsight, it was a really stupid thing to have done.” He continues: “I think when my mum goes to see my films in particular, the things she likes the most are the moments she goes, ‘Oh, that’s my little boy.’ But in this film there’s nothing like that.”

It’s been more than a year since Cherry wrapped, and now that the color has returned to his cheeks, his mum’s forgiven him. But it took some time for his friends and family to get used to the idea of him headlining this kind of film, which is based on the novel of the same name by Nico Walker, a real-life bank robber–turned–literary darling.

Holland’s parents—Mum is Nicola Frost, a photographer, and Dad is Dominic Holland, a writer and comedian—came around after watching a full cut of the film for a second time. “They were able to enjoy it as a movie and not a biopic of their son doing heroin,” he says. “They are really proud, and they really liked it.”

Satisfying his parents is the most important thing to Holland, and at his age, it’s a desire he hasn’t yet learned to hide. “If I seek anyone’s approval, it would be my parents’,” he says. “That would be the highest level of achievement.” So by this crucial measure, Holland has already succeeded. Now he just has to figure out how to talk about the film with the rest of the world, all while fulfilling his ongoing obligations to Sony and Marvel as the youngest Spider-Man in the history of the role. It’ll be no small feat: His next release takes on the horrors of the opioid crisis, but he’ll have to remain the superhero next door. He wants to please his family, his bosses, and his fans while facing perhaps the biggest challenge of all in the process: being pleased with himself.

Read more at Esquire.com