For over a decade, Tom Holland has been synonymous with one role above all others: Peter Parker. Since swinging into the MCU in Captain America: Civil War, Holland has become the defining Spider-Man for a generation, and with Spider-Man: Brand New Day back in theaters, that legacy shows no signs of slowing down.
But reducing Holland to his web-slinging alter ego does the actor a disservice. Long before he was cast as Spidey — and consistently in the years since — Holland has built a filmography full of risky, dramatically demanding, and genre-hopping work. He’s survived a tsunami on screen, disappeared into a voice-only phone call for 90 minutes, played a PTSD-stricken war veteran turned addict, and now anchored Christopher Nolan’s most ambitious epic yet.
So if you’re a fan looking to go beyond the red-and-blue suit, here’s our ranking of Tom Holland’s best non-Spider-Man movies, from solid to essential.
10. Onward (2020)
Pixar’s Onward doesn’t get talked about as much as the studio’s heavier hitters, but it’s a warm, funny showcase for Holland’s range as a voice actor. He plays Ian Lightfoot, an anxious teenage elf trying to spend one final magical day with his late father, alongside Chris Pratt as his older brother Barley. It’s a smaller, gentler entry in Holland’s catalog, but it’s an easy reminder that his appeal extends well past live-action.
9. Chaos Walking (2021)
A troubled production that shuffled release dates for years before finally landing in 2021, Chaos Walking is far from a perfect film. But it’s an interesting, underseen sci-fi swing, with Holland playing Todd Hewitt, a young man on a colonized planet where every thought men have is broadcast aloud as “Noise.” Paired with Daisy Ridley, Holland leans into a rawer, more vulnerable register than most of his blockbuster work — it just never quite finds the audience it deserved.
8. In the Heart of the Sea (2015)
Ron Howard’s whaling epic, loosely based on the true story that inspired Moby-Dick, gave Holland an early opportunity to work opposite Chris Hemsworth. Holland plays Thomas Nickerson, the cabin boy whose recollections frame the story of the whaleship Essex and its doomed pursuit of a massive sperm whale. It’s not among Howard’s best-remembered films, but it’s a solid early credit that shows Holland holding his own in a stacked ensemble.
7. Uncharted (2022)
Holland’s first live-action leading role after securing his Spider-Man stardom, Uncharted adapts the beloved PlayStation game series with Holland as a young Nathan Drake, treasure hunter in training under the mentorship of Mark Wahlberg’s Victor Sullivan. Critics were split, but the film was a genuine commercial hit, and it proved Holland could carry a big-budget action franchise on his own name. A sequel has been in conversation ever since.
6. The Impossible (2012)
This is where it all started. Before Marvel came calling, a 16-year-old Holland delivered a performance far beyond his years in J.A. Bayona’s harrowing dramatization of a family’s survival during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Playing the eldest son helping his injured mother (Naomi Watts) navigate the disaster’s aftermath, Holland announced himself as a serious dramatic talent, earning attention from critics and, eventually, Marvel Studios itself.
5. Cherry (2021)
Reuniting with Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo, Cherry is arguably Holland’s most transformative dramatic performance to date. He plays an Army medic who returns home from Iraq with severe PTSD, spirals into opioid addiction, and eventually turns to robbing banks to fund his habit. It’s a bleak, sprawling character study that asks Holland to physically and emotionally transform across multiple chapters of a man’s unraveling — and he mostly delivers, even when the film’s ambitious structure doesn’t always cohere.
4. The Lost City of Z (2016)
James Gray’s slow-burning historical epic follows British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) on his obsessive search for a lost civilization in the Amazon, with Holland playing Fawcett’s son Jack. It’s a patient, painterly film that rewards viewers willing to sit with its mood, and Holland’s work here — especially as the film moves through the decades — hints at the more introspective, prestige-adjacent register he’d return to in later films like The Devil All the Time.
3. The Devil All the Time (2020)
Antonio Campos’s Southern Gothic ensemble piece gave Holland one of his darkest and most compelling roles: Arvin Russell, a young man navigating a world of corrupt preachers, serial killers, and inherited violence in rural Ohio. Surrounded by a murderers’ row of talent — Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård, Sebastian Stan, Riley Keough — Holland more than holds the center of the story, delivering a quietly seething performance that remains one of the clearest signals of his range outside the MCU.
2. Locke (2013)
Holland’s most unconventional credit is also one of his most acclaimed. In Steven Knight’s real-time thriller, Holland is never seen on screen — he’s a voice on the other end of a series of phone calls to Tom Hardy’s Ivan Locke, a construction manager whose life quietly implodes over the course of one long night drive. It’s a bold structural experiment that lives or dies on its voice performances, and Holland’s contribution as Locke’s son is a key emotional anchor in a film built almost entirely on tension and dialogue.
1. The Odyssey (2026)
Christopher Nolan’s big-budget adaptation of Homer’s epic poem was always going to top this list, and it does so easily. Holland stars alongside Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Charlize Theron in a sweeping, myth-scaled retelling of Odysseus’s journey home from Troy — gods, monsters, and all. Early reactions have positioned it as one of the biggest films of the year, and for Holland, it’s a clear signal that his post-Spider-Man career is shifting toward exactly this kind of prestige, blockbuster-scale filmmaking. It’s the best evidence yet that Holland’s ceiling extends far beyond Queens.
Honorable Mentions
A few other titles worth a watch if you’re working through Holland’s filmography: Pilgrimage (2017), a bruising medieval survival tale, and How I Live Now (2013), an early supporting turn in a post-apocalyptic YA drama.
FAQ
What is Tom Holland’s best movie that isn’t Spider-Man? Critical consensus and box office momentum currently point to The Odyssey (2026), Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation of Homer’s poem, though The Devil All the Time and Locke remain the strongest picks for pure dramatic range.
What was Tom Holland’s first movie? Holland’s breakout film role came in The Impossible (2012), though he’d already performed on stage in Billy Elliot: The Musical years earlier.
Does Tom Holland do voice acting? Yes — Holland voiced Ian Lightfoot in Pixar’s Onward (2020) and appeared as an unseen voice performer in Locke (2013).
