The One Thing Tom Holland Refused To Do In Spider-Man: No Way Home
I can't say if actor Tom Holland is well-suited to play Spider-Man, but I can say with absolute certainty that he is a first-rate teen heartthrob. He's handsome, affable, and dazzling in interviews. He has mastered the self-deprecating smile, and his tendency to give away the plot details of Avengers movies weirdly humanizes him. When it comes to acting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it seems little else is demanded of its leading men. Acting is less important than ineffable charm.
Holland, 27, has played Peter Parker/Spider-Man in six feature films (seven, if you count an on-the-TV cameo in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), having appeared in several would-be blockbusters/prestige pictures in between, including "The Lost City of Z," "Cherry," and "Chaos Walking." He most recently starred in all 10 episodes of the miniseries "The Crowded Room." He also played the role of Nathan Drake in the video game adaptation "Uncharted." Nathan Drake is a younger, hotter Indiana Jones-like character who bounds about the globe hunting for treasures and generally looking sexy. For that film, Holland got a spiky, shortly-cropped hairdo that matched his derring-do. After "Uncharted" wrapped filming in October of 2020, Holland had to report to the set of "Spider-Man: No Way Home," an ambitious crossover film with three different Spider-Man actors uniting.
The filmmakers of "No Way Home" were concerned about Holland's appearance, though. It seems that his Nathan Drake hairdo didn't match his 'do from "Spider-Man: Far from Home," shot a few years before. To rectify this, director Jon Watts thought to outfit Holland with a wig. According to a 2021 interview with Esquire, Holland staunchly refused to act in a partial wig. It was natural heartthrob hair all the way.
Spider-Hair
This was only an issue as the events of "No Way Home" take place almost immediately after the events of "Far from Home." Not only did the hairdo have to match, but the filmmakers were beholden to a specific master aesthetic that runs through the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-Man, the general wisdom went, had to have a certain costume and a certain haircut. Superheroes are at least as much about aesthetics as they are about character.
For this one time, however, Holland cared not for aesthetics. Like a weird inversion of the mighty Samson, he refused to let his hair be made longer, lest he lose his heartthrob powers. As Holland told Esquire:
"For the first time in my life, I put my foot down as the leading actor and was like, 'I'm not f***ing wearing that wig. I'm going to have shorter hair and you're going to have to deal with it.'"
Holland's refusal had little to do with principals and everything to do with vanity. Holland simply liked his Nathan Drake haircut better than his Peter Parker haircut. "I have cool shaved sides and it's slick at the back," he said of his Nick Drake cut, "and that's not very Peter Parker. [Peter's] a bit of a loser. So they put this wig on me that was just around the sides."
But he ripped it off and set it on fire. Well, metaphorically, anyway. It didn't matter that having a cool haircut was out-of-character. Holland liked it. It stayed.
As of this writing, there have been no reports on additional Holland-starring Spider-Man movies. If another MCU Spider-Man flick is put into production, let's hope Holland is bold enough to appear either completely bald, or sporting a massive, feathered hairdo to make the guys in Hanoi Rocks jealous.