Tom Holland is one of the biggest rising stars in Hollywood thanks to his role as Spider-Man in the MCU. The British actor started off young in the industry with a stint in the West End playing the ballet-dancing son of a miner in Billy Elliot, before making the transition to the screen starring in the real-life disaster movie The Impossible opposite Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. Though he may be the most well known of his extended family, he certainly isn’t the only creative.
Holland was born on June 1, 1996, in Kingston-upon-Thames, in South West London to parents Nicola and Dominic Holland. His mother is a photographer and his father is a comedian and author. It was thanks to his parent’s creative occupations that Holland was inspired to pursue his own creative path from a very early age. After dancing around to Janet Jackson songs in his house, his mother encouraged him to start taking dance classes in which he excelled. It was through this that he was spotted for a role in the famed West End musical Billy Elliot aged only 9 years old.
Holland was not the only member of his family to be inspired by his creative parents. He has three younger brothers, all of whom he is very close with, Harry, Sam, and Paddy Holland. Harry and Sam are twins, born on February 14, 1999, whilst the youngest, Paddy, was born on December 6, 2004. The brothers have all found a way to stay in each other’s lives through their careers, with Tom and Harry in particular being quite close, having worked on movies together and have plans to own their own production company together.
Harry has worked on many of Tom’s movies with him in small roles here and there. When he was only 11 years old he had a small role as “kid in tent” in The Impossible and has an uncredited role in Spider-Man: No Way Home as well as working as part of the crew in Uncharted. He doesn’t work exclusively with his brother though, as he worked once again in a film with Watts as young Prince Harry in the 2013 Diana film. Most recently he voiced a character in the third season of The Mandalorian.
He is a writer and director as well, having directed six short films, the most recent one being Last Call, starring his brother but also British acting legend Lindsay Duncan. Tom has been very open about how much he relies on his brother, talking on Jimmy Kimmel Live the host noted that his brother Harry “works for you,” to which Tom corrected “Well, I really work for him if I’m honest.” He adds,
“If Harry wasn’t in my life I wouldn’t have made it here tonight. Because I’m just stupid and he has to tell me where to go all the time.”
Harry isn’t the only brother that has worked alongside Tom. Sam, Harry’s twin, has also acted in a few of Tom’s films such as The Impossible and in his brother’s 2020 short Roses for Lily. He also, however, has a love of cooking and has been training to become a chef for the past few years and has created his own food website samhollandfood.com, and shares easy-to-follow reels on his Instagram. When Tom was asked by staff on Spider-Man: Far From Home if he wanted a chef, he had them hire Sam saying, “he just basically lived at my house and cooked for us every day. It was amazing.”
The youngest Holland sibling is Paddy, another aspiring actor, who has also worked on a handful of projects including his brother Harry’s Roses for Lily as well as the Apple TV Plus show Invasion and the Netflix supernatural thriller Lockwood & Co. Despite their older brothers’ hectic schedule it would appear that all the brothers have found a way to remain close and a part of one another’s lives. They are often seen together on social media with most of them being active users.
You can see Tom next in the Apple TV Plus mystery thriller The Crowded Room alongside Amanda Seyfried, which will premiere on June 9.
