Tom Holland Admits He Lost His British Acting Skills After Spending Years with Marvel
Can an actor be so good at his job that they actually lose parts of his own origin? Apparently, yes, as Tom Holland revealed he completely lost his old English accent.
There are oh so many technicalities in acting: it’s not like you can just pretend to be an entirely different person without effort.
You need to start thinking and behaving like your character; you need to capture their mimics and gestures; and (this is arguably the hardest part for many aspiring actors) you need to talk like them.
Changing your speaking patterns is not the hard part. The hard part is adapting the accent and vocabulary specific to the character’s native or residential area to ensure they appear as believable and whole as possible. Accents, jargon, and other complicated aspects of “speaking like a character” take quite a lot of effort to pull off.
But is it possible to become so lost in your alternative realities as an actor to forget what you used to speak like originally?
According to Tom Holland, yes.
Tom Holland became one of the most famous actors of his generation after the new Spider-Man movies launched him into international stardom. The young actor has since appeared in several Avengers installments as well as his own, standalone adventures — and after years of playing Peter Parker, Holland lost his native accent!
Well, not completely. But when he’s supposed to be himself on camera, he subconsciously speaks American…which is weird when you think about it.
“I can’t act in an English accent anymore. I did a commercial the other day as Tom Holland, and I was like, ‘Hey guys, how you doin’?’ And they’re like, ‘You’re from Kingston, by the way,’” the actor shared on The Graham Norton Show.
Admittedly, it would be an exaggeration to call this phenomenon “losing one’s self,” but having lost the ability to act in your local version of the language is wild. Tom Holland has spent the majority of his life in England, and now he speaks with an American accent even when he doesn’t need to — what are the odds of that?