Tom Hollander and Tom Holland have a few things in common. Both are British actors. Both have done big-time franchise movies (Hollander was a baddie in two Pirates of the Caribbeans and Queen’s manager in Bohemian Rhapsody; Holland does something or other with Marvel). Oh, and both have almost the same name. When your surnames are but two letters off, people are bound to make some mistakes. For instance, once Hollander (that is, the one who’s not Spider-Man) was sent one of Holland’s payslips, and given its size the error was downright sadistic.
Per Entertainment Weekly, Hollander — who recently played one of the murderous “gays” on the second season of The White Lotus — appeared on Monday’s episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers. One night, while seeing a friend’s play, he checked his email during intermission. One was from his agency, and it read, “Payment advice slip: Your first box office bonus for The Avengers.”
“And I thought, ‘I don’t think I’m in The Avengers,’” Hollander recalled thinking to himself.
Sadly, Hollander was right, he’s not in The Avengers movies, a fact driven home even more by the large size of the payslip.
“It was an astonishing amount of money,” Hollander remembered. “And it was not his salary, it was his first box office bonus. Not the whole box office, the first one. And it was more money than I’ve ever — it was a seven-figure sum. He was 20 or something. So my feeling of smugness that you remember I had in the first half disappeared very quickly.”
Though Hollander and Holland share many differences, most notably age, having nearly the same surname has proven “very difficult” over the years, at least for Hollander.
“Obviously I don’t actually get mistaken for him, but in non-visual contexts I am mistaken for him all the time,” Hollander said. “So like, talking to utility companies, they just, ‘And what’s your name?’ And they go, ‘Tom Holland?’ Because they’ve heard ‘Tom Holland.’ Tom Holland? I go, ‘No, it’s Tom Hollander.’”
Somtimes, he recalled, “I’m introduced to somebody’s very, very excited, then confused, then disappointed children. They go, ‘My children are so excited to meet you.’ And I go, ‘Are they, though?’”
He added, “They come out and they go, ‘Where is he? Where is he?’ And they go, ‘No, no.’”
You can watch Hollander talk about the wacky mix-ups in the video below.
(Via EW)