By January Nelson

Updated 27 minutes ago, July 26, 2026

Holland got his start dancing in “Billy Elliot the Musical” in the West End, then walked away from dance the day he finished. Now he’s returning to the same London studio where it began, this time to become Fred Astaire.

Fred Astaire and his sister Adele share a dance atop London’s Savoy Hotel in June 1923, years before Fred became a Hollywood legend. Photo by Fox Photos / Hulton Archive via Getty Images.

The Fred Astaire biopic was announced five years ago, and Holland has only just taken his first rehearsals for it, in the middle of back-to-back press tours for “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”

At AMC Lincoln Square Theater on July 14, 2026, Tom Holland appears for the New York City premiere of “The Odyssey.” Photo by Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers together in a scene from the 1938 RKO comedy musical ‘Carefree,’ directed by Mark Sandrich. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images.

“As soon as I finish with these tours, I’m diving back into the dance studio,” he told George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America.” Those early sessions rattled him. He said they filled him “with excitement and absolute dread because I’ve got so much work to do to try and do Fred proud.”

Fred Astaire photographed on July 31, 1956, the year he was cementing his legacy as one of Hollywood’s most iconic performers. Photo by Stanley Sherman / Hulton Archive via Getty Images.

His plan is to match how Astaire actually worked: “no doubles, to do all of the dancing [myself], to shoot those dances in one shot.” On “Live With Kelly and Mark” the next day, he framed the role as the closing of his career’s first act and a move into work that scares him. “What I’m looking for in this next chapter is like the ultimate challenge, and to find things that really scare me.”

Tom Holland steps out for the Paris premiere of “The Odyssey” on July 8, 2026. Photo by Aurore Marechal / Getty Images.

One regret drives it. After “Billy Elliot,” he quit dancing, and the biopic has brought him back to the central London studio where he first rehearsed as a kid.

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