Actor Tom Hollander has had a successful career that includes some of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, a Bafta win for The Night Manager and, most recently, The White Lotus.
But success can be relative, as he learned when he accidentally received Spider-Man actor Tom Holland’s bonus pay slip for one of the Avengers movies.
Hollander – who, like Holland, is British but 29 years older and has a last name two letters longer than the Marvel superstar – told Seth Meyers’ US talk show Monday that he is often mistaken for his almost-namesake in a “nonvisual context”.
So when the two briefly belonged to the same agency, that set up a wild accounting mixup.
Hollander recalled how he was basking in smugness while watching a friend perform an Anton Chekhov play for a pittance after he had just received $30,000 for a BBC show.
Then, the mixup happened.
At intermission, he said he checked his emails and saw one from his agency that read, “Payment advice slip — your first box office bonus for The Avengers”.
Hollander, of course, was never in the superhero films but perhaps wishes he had been, especially after seeing how much money was on the document.
“It was an astonishing amount of money,” Hollander said. “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.”
The host then joked that it was so big that “they had to send it in two emails.”
“My feeling of smugness that you remember I had, disappeared very quickly,” Hollander said shortly after. “But that’s showbiz.”
Fast-forward to 8:49 for the Hollander-Holland mixup: