What would you do if you suddenly saw $1 million appear in your bank account? Its something many of us may dream of, but a dream it will stay – unless you are English actor Tom Hollander, that is.
Hollander, who has recently been seen in The White Lotus, was innocently checking his emails some time ago, when he found one with a payslip on it entitled ‘Box office bonus for The Avengers’.
It turned out the payment was intended for Spider-Man actor Tom Holland. While Hollander was shocked at seeing more money than he’d ever seen before, the mistake was obvious. He explained to Seth Myers on his Late Night show that he and Holland had the same agent for a short time, and someone in the accounts department had got confused.
Hollander – who has yet to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – said it was an “astonishing” amount of money – and only part of what Holland will have earned for the film. “It was not his salary. It was his first box office bonus. Not the whole box office bonus, the first one.”
Indeed, Hollander, who is best known for his roles as Lord Cutler Beckett in the Pirates of the Caribbean films and Quentin in season 2 of The White Lotus, was at the time reckoning he was quite well off having recently earnt £30,000 for a role in a BBC show in the UK.
Hollander added that he gets mistaken for his younger near-namesake – who has so far appeared as Spider-man in six MCU films – regularly in “non-visual contexts”, which causes excitement when talking to utility firms, followed by disappointment, he joked to Myers.
