The most “painful” role of Tom Holland’s career: “I have never been so nervous”
Swinging through skyscrapers and coming face-to-face with super villains in all in a day’s work for Tom Holland. But none of that compares to the nerves of starring in Cherry.
Released in 2021, the Russo brothers’ drama asked Holland to ditch the spandex and embody a war veteran spiralling into opioid addiction. Based on Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, it wasn’t exactly a cosy rom-com detour. Holland wasn’t just carrying a blockbuster, he was carrying the dramatic weight of someone’s traumatic life story.
“No film has made me so nervous,” he confessed at the time. “The idea of Nico watching Cherry terrified me.”
Walker, a former medic turned addict turned convicted bank robber, had written the book behind bars. By the time cameras rolled, he’d cleaned up and moved on. Holland never met him during production, but that only cranked up the pressure: “I hope he can be proud of what he’s written, and his progression and healing, and that I’ve done his life justice.”
If the mental strain wasn’t enough, Holland threw in some physical misery too. Already slim, he shed around 20 pounds to capture his character’s decline, swapping superhero bulking sessions for bin-bag jogs and joyless diets.
“It was uncomfortable, even painful,” he admitted. Translation: not your average Marvel training montage.
Of course, whatever discomfort Holland endured on set was still a pale shadow of Walker’s reality. That was the point. If the film was going to depict the brutality of addiction, then Holland felt duty-bound to at least dip his toes in the suffering. Method, but make it masochistic.
It wasn’t the first time Holland had embraced intensity for the sake of honesty. Long before donning the Spidey suit, he gave a remarkable early performance in JA Bayona’s 2012 survival drama The Impossible. Starring opposite Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts as a young boy must have been very intimidating, but Holland delivered a performance way beyond his years as he conveyed the real-life terror of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
In many ways, Cherry was Holland’s big gamble. After years of playing the affable kid next door (albeit one who could cling to ceilings), here was a chance to prove his range. Critics weren’t entirely sold—some admired the ambition, others thought the Russos had bitten off more than they could chew—but nearly everyone agreed Holland gave it everything.
It’s telling that what truly haunted him wasn’t the reviews, but the thought of one man watching: Nico Walker. For Holland, the responsibility wasn’t to cinema history, but to someone who had actually lived the nightmare. That level of anxiety says a lot about him as a performer, less about chasing Oscars, more about getting it right for the source.
And while Cherry didn’t set the world alight, it did set a marker. Holland proved he could handle bruising, adult material.
Painful? Yes. Nerve-shredding? Definitely. But you need to take a step out of your comfort zone to really feel alive and challenge yourself, and nothing is more comfy than a billion-dollar franchise. Cherry proved that Holland was way more than just a superhero, and that is worth its weight in gold.
