Thomas Stanley Holland was born on 1 June 1996 in Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, the eldest of four sons born to the comedian and author Dominic Holland and the photographer Nikki Frost. He attended Donhead Preparatory School in Wimbledon and later the BRIT School in Croydon, and grew up in a household where performing was an ordinary occupation rather than a distant ambition, according to Wikipedia.

Holland was spotted at a hip-hop dance class in Wimbledon in 2006 and, after roughly two years of training, took over the title role in Billy Elliot the Musical in the West End in 2008, playing it until 2010. His film debut came in 2012 in The Impossible, J. A. Bayona’s account of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, in which he played the eldest son opposite Naomi Watts. The performance won him a string of newcomer awards and established him as a serious dramatic actor several years before the superhero work began.

Marvel and Sony announced in June 2015 that Holland, then nineteen, would be the third screen Spider-Man in just over a decade. He appeared first in Captain America: Civil War in 2016, then carried his own film in Spider-Man: Homecoming the following year. The casting worked because he was young enough to be plausibly sixteen and physically capable enough to do a great deal of his own stunt work, and it converted him from a respected British newcomer into a globally recognisable lead.

Spider-Man: No Way Home, released in 2021, took close to two billion dollars worldwide and ranks among the highest-grossing films ever made. He won the BAFTA Rising Star Award, voted for by the public, in 2017. In 2026 he appeared in both Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey, each of which passed a billion dollars at the global box office within a month of release, a run that placed him among a very small group of actors capable of opening a film on that scale.

Holland’s public profile extends beyond the films. His 2017 performance of Rihanna’s Umbrella on Lip Sync Battle, in full costume and heels, has been watched hundreds of millions of times and drew on the dance training that started his career. He has one of the larger social media followings of any British actor, and has spoken candidly about stepping away from those platforms for the sake of his mental health.

Holland has fronted campaigns for luxury fashion houses, most visibly Prada, and has taken on brand ambassador roles in menswear and watches. His publicly visible endorsement portfolio is smaller than that of many actors at a comparable level of fame, weighted towards a few long-running relationships rather than a high volume of short deals, though the terms of such agreements are not disclosed and the balance may simply reflect what has been reported rather than a stated strategy.

In 2024 Holland launched Bero, a non-alcoholic beer brand, having given up drinking and spoken publicly about how difficult he found the decision. The venture is unusual among actor-led drinks businesses in being tied directly to a personal position rather than a licensing opportunity, and it has expanded steadily across the United States and United Kingdom. He has also moved into production, developing projects through his own company alongside his acting work.

Holland has stayed close to home, buying property in south-west London rather than relocating permanently to Los Angeles, and has spoken about the importance of remaining near his parents and brothers. He is a keen golfer and car enthusiast, though he has been notably restrained in public about his spending compared with many actors of similar earning power.