‘Spider-Man’ Star Tom Holland’s Worst Job Is Humbling
Most actors alive (and not) started with a menial job that gave them a sense of humility on where they came from. Only a privileged few managed to start working on film sets when kids and kept that going as adults.
In the case of Tom Holland, he was fairly young when he started becoming an actor. Nevertheless, he was still old enough to take on a regular job in the U.K. as a young teen.
He once gave away what this regular job was. Plus, he revealed he had a particular career backup in mind just in case the acting never worked out. His reaction to his old job might raise a few eyebrows.
What was Tom Holland’s worst job?
Holland mentioned one of his early jobs when answering 15 questions for Yahoo!. This Q&A was back in 2017 when he was still relatively new to the Spider-Man role.
When asked what his worst job ever was, he mentioned he worked as a pot washer in a local pub. To Americans, hearing “pot washer” might sound like something else rather than the usual designation of being a dishwasher.
Regardless, everyone understood what he meant, and everyone knows washing pots and dishes is usually the most entry level of all jobs. Holland still said the job was not as terrible as one might think. What he said afterward, however, might be looked at as being less humble, despite him knowing what manual labor jobs are like.
Apparently Holland started working on film sets at the same time as his pot washer job. Once realizing the dichotomy between the two, he said this about his former job: “Awww, this sucks!”
Did Tom Holland really put down his pot washer job?
Sure, working on a film set is a whole other world from washing dishes in a pub. Making that exclamation at the end might be looked at askance by some, if probably agreed with by most people.
No one really wants a job like that, if still being the perfect job to humble one’s self. Also, it really is not the most terrible job a person can have since it requires little cleanup afterward. Imagine having to do tougher labor jobs like picking up garbage or even digging ditches. Many actors have had to start out doing things like this (or worse) to keep their heads above water.
At least Holland managed to change his life virtually overnight by winning the role of Spider-Man. Many other actors have to sometimes wait until further into adulthood to find themselves in the place he is now.
As Holland continued to answer more questions for Yahoo!, he did note he had a career backup plan. A few are likely surprised at what the potential alternate path of Tom Holland might have been.
Tom Holland, the possible future carpenter
Another interesting reveal in the above Q&A was Holland’s smart plan to go to carpentry school. Elaborating on this further for GQ once, Holland noted that acting jobs almost dried up for him in 2014 at the age of 18. His mother enrolled him in a six-week carpentry school to help create a Plan B.
It seems Holland admits to a bit of brief arrogance in not being able to stick any landings with his auditions. Said Holland himself: “I basically got into this rut where I wasn’t, like, taking auditions seriously, and I just thought, I’ll get this job, I’ll get this job. And I didn’t. It was a bit of a punch in the teeth.”
Imagining Holland as a carpenter might look strange now. Yet, there really is no other more respectable regular job in the world. He might have had as much employment in his own carpentry business as he has as an actor now had things worked out differently.
