Thanks to a Tom Holland and Tom Hollander mix up, the wrong actor got an Avengers box office bonus payslip

Tom Hollander in The White Lotus
(Image credit: HBO)

Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War are some of the highest grossing movies of all time, so, as you can imagine, box office bonuses for its actors are bound to be hefty sums. 

That's what beloved British actor Tom Hollander – star of the likes of The White Lotus and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise – discovered, anyway, when an incredibly easy mistake thanks to those near-identical names left him in possession of Tom Holland's payslip. 

Speaking on Late Night with Seth Myers, Hollander revealed that he saw the payslip while in the audience of a play starring a friend of his. Hollander recalled sitting "smugly" after "having just done a BBC show for 30 grand or something," but then an email he saw during the intermission quickly dispelled his good mood. 

"I thought I'd check my emails, and I got an email from the agency saying, 'Payment advice slip: Your first box office bonus for The Avengers,'" Hollander explained – he and Holland were with the same agency at the time. "And I thought, 'I don't think I'm in The Avengers.'"

He opened the email anyway, and was rather shocked by what he saw. "It was an astonishing amount of money," Hollander revealed. "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 [seen] – 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. But that's showbiz, it's up, it's down, it's hero, it's zero."

Considering how many upcoming Marvel movies are on the horizon, there's plenty of time for Hollander to join the MCU – maybe as a multiverse version of Spider-Man, to keep the gag going? 

Next up for Marvel is Deadpool 3, which recently wrapped filming and is arriving this July 26. While you wait, check out our guide to all the upcoming major movie release dates to plan your theater trips for the year. 

Molly Edwards
Senior Entertainment Writer

I'm a Senior Entertainment Writer here at 12DOVE, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.