Tom Holland may be best known for his tenure as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man, but the actor’s background actually lies in musical theater after he trained as a dancer and landed the title role in the stage adaptation of Billy Elliot back in 2008.
Of course, you may have seen his incredible performance on Lip Sync Battle where he brought Rihanna’s “Umbrella” to unforgettable life and left audiences with their jaws firmly on the floor, so he knows how to bust a move or two. The 25 year-old is looking to broaden his horizons outside of the MCU, and he’s now confirmed to the Associated Press that he’ll be playing the legendary Fred Astaire in an upcoming biopic.
“Oh I am playing Fred Astaire, yeah. I am – the script came in a week ago. I haven’t read it yet, they haven’t given it to me, I know that Amy Pascal has the script. She Face Timed me earlier, I was in the bath and we had a lovely Face Time. But I will be playing Fred Astaire.”
In a stroke of incredible coincidence, there’s another Astaire biopic in the works at Amazon, which is even more ironically set to star Jamie Bell as the performer, who of course made his mainstream breakthrough in the feature film version of Billy Elliot, while Margaret Qualley is signed as Ginger Rogers.
Netflix’s The Devil All the Time and Apple’s Cherry saw Holland deliver a pair of highly accomplished and widely praised turns in more dramatic projects, and a high-profile biopic of a Hollywood icon that plays to his strengths has all the makings and the undoubted potential to be a career-best effort.