At 30, Tom Holland Is Now The Highest-Grossing Male Actor In History

Tom Holland has just become the third highest-grossing actor in film history. Only Scarlett Johansson in second and Zoe Saldaña in first sit above him, which makes Holland the highest-grossing male actor of all time, and at 30, the youngest name in the top 10.

The jump came off the back of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which topped the box office again this past weekend and has now taken more than $2.25 billion worldwide. That puts it sixth on the all-time list and it is still in cinemas. Chris Pratt held third place until a few days ago and has been knocked down to fourth.

Speed is the real story. Before this year’s two releases, Holland’s career total sat at roughly $13.6 billion, behind Robert Downey Jr. on $14.32 billion, Samuel L. Jackson on $14.61 billion and Pratt on $15.16 billion. He has cleared all three of them inside a month.

Two films did it. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey cast Holland as Telemachus and has passed $1.4 billion, taking the record for the highest-grossing R-rated film ever off Deadpool & Wolverine and becoming the biggest film of Nolan’s career. Brand New Day arrived two weeks later and broke the domestic opening weekend record Avengers: Endgame had held since 2019.

Saldaña leads the pack on $15.470 billion, though Johansson, Holland and Pratt are all within a few hundred million of her, which at this altitude is a rounding error. Here is where the top 10 sits today.

1. Zoe Saldaña
2. Scarlett Johansson
3. Tom Holland
4. Chris Pratt
5. Samuel L. Jackson
6. Robert Downey Jr.
7. Tom Cruise
8. Chris Hemsworth
9. Vin Diesel
10. Chris Evans

Chris Hemsworth at eight is the Australian entry, and the only man on the list who did his early work in Summer Bay. Tom Cruise at seven is the outlier, the sole name in the top 10 who built his total without a Marvel contract, over four decades of doing his own stunts and refusing to make anything that doesn’t open wide.

Nine of the ten are MCU alumni. Saldaña’s work across the Avatar films is what got her over the line at number one.

Robert Downey Jr. is the one to watch from here. He sits on $14.315 billion and returns in Avengers: Doomsday this December, a film expected to print money. Saldaña, Johansson, Pratt, Jackson, Diesel and Holland are all absent from it, so Downey Jr. has a clear run at the top spot depending on how it performs.

Hemsworth and Evans are in Doomsday too, but they sit too far down the table to threaten first place.

There is one asterisk on all of it. If cameos counted, Stan Lee would sit above everyone on $30.527 billion, a number nobody on the list will get near. He never carried a film in his life. He just kept turning up.