Tom Holland is marking his return to the West End with a starring role in a new version of Romeo & Juliet.
Holland, 27, announced the news on Tuesday, February 5, alongside a poster for the upcoming play. The actor will star as Romeo in the production, which will be directed by Jamie Lloyd. According to the show’s website, Lloyd’s version is a “pulsating new vision” of Shakespeare’s “immortal tale of wordsmiths, rhymers, lovers and fighters.”
Romeo & Juliet will have a 12-week run at the Duke of York’s Theatre. Tickets are set to go on sale February 13, and the play will run from May until August. There are no details yet about Holland’s costars in the play.
Holland has a history with London’s West End, as he began his career with a role in Billy Elliot the Musical at Victoria Palace Theatre. After two years of training, he scored a supporting role and was upgraded to a title role, which he played until 2010.
In 2012, Holland made his film debut in The Impossible, and his career only soared from there. He became a global star after landing the role of Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Holland has starred in six movies in the superhero franchise so far.
“I reckon I had 30 Spider-Man costumes over the years since I was a little baby,” Holland recalled during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “I had Spider-Man bed sheets. Two years ago, I went to a fancy dress party dressed as Spider-Man and looked like an absolute idiot.”
Since bringing the role of Peter Parker to life, Holland has explored a wide variety of roles in films including Uncharted and Cherry. He has said that his most challenging project was Apple TV+’s The Crowded Room because of how it affected his mental health.
“Learning about mental health and the power of it, and speaking to psychiatrists about [the characters] Danny and Billy’s struggles, has been something that has been so informative to my own life,” he told Entertainment Weekly in May 2023 about playing an antisocial man arrested for a shooting.
Holland recalled struggling with the subject matter, adding, “I’m no stranger to the physical aspects of the job doing the whole action-movie thing. But the mental aspect, it really beat me up, and it took a long time for me to recover afterwards, to sort of get back to reality.”
He continued: “I was seeing myself in him, but in my personal life. I remember having a bit of a meltdown at home and thinking, like, ‘I’m going to shave my head. I need to shave my head because I need to get rid of this character.’ And, obviously, we were mid-shooting, so I decided not to. … It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
