Actor mulls over return to roots in dancing, while promoting latest Marvel instalment
The Spider-Man star Tom Holland has revealed he is considering quitting acting at the age of 25 as part of a “midlife crisis” come early.
Holland, who was promoting the latest instalment of the Marvel series, said he was considering giving up acting to return to his roots in dancing, after he played Billy Elliot in the West End as a child. “I don’t even know if I want to be an actor,” he told Sky News in an interview to promote his new film. “I started acting when I was 11 and I haven’t done anything else, so I’d like to go and do other things. Genuinely, I’m sort of … having a midlife crisis – at 25, I’m having like a pre-midlife crisis.”The
Actor revealed this week that he had signed up to play Fred Astaire in a biopic, a move that could signal the beginning of his career shift.Holland acknowledged a debt to the Spider-Man franchise, which had enabled him to “do some amazing things”. The latest film, No Way Home, is expected to be the biggest of the year – possibly ever – with pre-sales before its
UK release on 15 December outstripping that of Avengers: Endgame (2019).Holland is not the first actor to tire quickly of the profession. Greta Garbo announced a “temporary” retirement at the age of 36 in 1941, while she was still one of the biggest
box office draws in the world. It lasted 49 years, until her death in 1990.Although her reasons are not fully understood, Garbo is believed to have been a private, introverted person who struggled with the spotlight cast on her through fame, and who perhaps pre-empted the declining opportunities at the time for female actors as their youthful beauty faded.More recently, the
Game of Thrones star Jack Gleeson retired after the series finished. He told Entertainment Weekly that he had been acting since he was eight and had “stopped enjoying it as much as I used to”. He said that earning a living from acting had changed his relationship with his craft compared with the “therapeutic” benefits he had enjoyed when it was just a hobby.