Thomas Stanley Holland (born 1 June 1996) is an English actor. His accolades include a British Academy Film Award, three Saturn Awards, a Guinness World Record and an appearance on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list. Some publications have called him one of the most popular actors of his generation.[a] Holland's career began at age nine when he enrolled in a dancing class, where a choreographer noticed him and arranged for him to audition for a role in Billy Elliot the Musical at London's Victoria Palace Theatre. After two years of training, he secured a supporting part in 2008 and was upgraded to the title role that year, which he played until 2010. Holland made his film debut in the disaster drama The Impossible (2012) as a teenage tourist trapped in a tsunami, for which he received a London Film Critics Circle Award for Young British Performer of the Year. After this, Holland decided to pursue acting as a full-time career, appearing in How I Li...