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It’s easy to confuse two actors with similar sounding names. Just ask fans of Dylan McDermott and/or Dermot Mulroney. These mixups happen, but sometimes they happen to such a degree that they can bruise egos and get people overexcited for no good reason, which is exactly what happened to Tom Hollander.

You’ve seen Hollander around, whether you knew his name or not. The British actor has appeared in everything from the Pirates of the Caribbean films to miniseries like The Night Manager to blockbusters like Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. He’s even voicing Alfred Pennyworth in the Harley Quinn animated series. He’s had an acclaimed and varied career so far, but because of his name, he’s sometimes confused with the movie star juggernaut that is fellow Brit Tom Holland. 

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“It’s been very difficult, because, you know, I was here first,” Hollander joked on a visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers this week. “But he’s enormously famous.”

Hollander went on to explain that visually, the two actors obviously look quite different, but in terms of name recognition people get them confused, particularly when he’s on the phone with utility companies and, of course, when he’s meeting “somebody’s very, very excited, then confused, then disappointed, children,”

“They go ‘My children are so excited to meet you,” Hollander said. “And I go ‘Are they, though?'”

How Tom Hollander Accidentally Got a Look at Tom Holland’s Avengers Paycheck

But as Hollander went on to explain, the biggest bruise to his ego when getting confused with Tom Holland came in the form of an email from his agency, which at the time he shared with the Spider-Man: No Way Home star. One day, during intermission at a play, Hollander checked his email and saw a payment advisory notice for a bonus check from Marvel’s Avengers films. 

“And I thought ‘I don’t think I’m in The Avengers.’ And it was an astonishing amount of money, and it was not his salary. It was his first box office bonus. Not the whole box office, the first one. And it was more money than I’ve ever…it was a seven-figure sum, and he was 20 or something.”

Before checking his emails and finding that pay stub directed at Holland, Hollander had been feeling quite pleased with his recent career choices, having just recently done a BBC show that was going to get him through the rest of the year financially. The play he was attending while the email arrived was being performed by one of his friends who was making less money, giving Hollander the feeling that he was the high-achieving, comfortable actor in the moment. Then came Holland’s massive box office bonus, and all that went away.

“But that’s showbiz,” Hollander joked. “It’s up, it’s down, it’s hero, it’s zero.”

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