Tom Holland Says The Odyssey Is His Last Chance to ‘Play a Boy’

The Odyssey star Tom Holland is ready to move on to the next part of his career. Playing heir to the throne of Ithaca and son of the long-lost Odysseus, the Spider-Man actor sees the role as the final time he’ll play a “boy” on screen.

Holland started his acting journey at a very young age, having taken to the London West End to play Billy Elliot at just 12-years-old. He would then make his big-screen debut in 2012’s The Impossible, before securing his most famous role to date in the MCU at the age of 20 when appearing as Peter Parker in Civil War. Now 30, and with both The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day hitting theaters this summer, he’s all ready to grow up.

“I think for me, it's one of the great coming-of-age stories in Western literature,” Holland told IGN about The Odyssey. “I think it felt really like the last time in my career I get the chance to play a boy. It felt like a perfect kind of bookend to the first chapter of my career.”

“What I love about Telemachus is that his journey is one of self-discovery,” he continued. “He's pining after his dad and doesn't really know where he belongs or who he is. And throughout the course of the movie, he learns to become a man, to step up to the plate, to take the throne, but only when he's ready.”

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Christopher Nolan’s latest certainly gives Holland more room to play with when it comes to his performance, demanding a sterner, more serious side to him than we’ve become accustomed to in his quippy MCU surroundings. But one thing he won’t be moving away from just yet is one of his co-stars, Jon Bernthal.

Both starring in The Odyssey, as well as opposite each other in Brand New Day, Holland and Bernthal have shared the screen for nearly a decade now, having also both appeared in the 2017 Apple TV thriller, Pilgrimage. It’s a relationship that Holland thinks fondly of.

“I think our first day on The Odyssey felt like a sort of legendary day for the two of us,” Holland revealed. “We had two days worth of work scheduled, and we got it all in one night, and it was an incredibly emotional scene. It was a huge challenge. I think we left the set feeling like we'd really accomplished something. I think what Chris [Nolan] does so well is he definitely tests you early on, and if you're able to rise to the occasion, it gives you so much confidence for the rest of the movie because you're like, ‘It definitely can't get any tougher than that.’ It really does. But it filled me with confidence.”

“And I love Jon to death,” Holland continued while looking ahead to Brand New Day. “I've known him for a really long time, but sharing the set with him as Spider-Man and the Punisher is so special because we did each other's self-tapes 10 years ago.”

The Odyssey releases in theaters on July 17. We’ve got plenty more on the movie here at IGN, including a guide about which format is best to watch it in and how Nolan built a 60-foot Cyclops Pupper instead of using CGI.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.