Tom Holland loves golf. He thinks about it constantly. He plays rounds on public courses and on courses that used to be the exclusive province of kings. He plays while on movie press tours in Asia and Europe and the United States. If he's not currently playing golf, there is almost always some part of his mind that is just anticipating the next time he'll be able to. “I don't know what has happened,” Holland says, “but it has become my addiction. I go to sleep thinking about playing golf the next day.” The two of us are, in fact, in the back of an SUV, traveling through Holland's native London on our way to play right now.

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What's interesting about this fixation is that Tom Holland could reasonably be said to have better things to do. Five years ago, when he was 18, he was among approximately 7,000 young men who auditioned for this century's third iteration of the Spider-Man franchise. Unlike the other 6,999 or so of them—by the end of this process, the short list of other actors being considered for the role was said to include Timothée Chalamet, Nat Wolff, Asa Butterfield, and Liam James—he got the part. In the years since, Holland's life has become quite strange.

Just this morning, for instance, he left his house holding a mug with his face on it. It's a long story—it was a gift from a friend, is the short version—but the relevant fact is that the mug depicts a younger Tom Holland, shirtless, in distress. Holland has just returned from a global promotional tour for Spider-Man: Far From Home, and while he was away, being Spider-Man, things seem to have changed for him around London, just a bit. “I was worried leaving my house this morning that paparazzi would be outside,” Holland says. “And there'd be a photo of me drinking a mug with my face on it.”

So golf has become an escape. It's a refuge from what has otherwise become of the life of Tom Holland. Marvel, in its decade-long takeover of the movies, has revitalized the careers of any number of great actors, and supercharged the burgeoning careers of others, but Holland is perhaps the first wholly made Marvel star. The first stand-alone Spider-Man film he starred in (he has played the role in five movies: Captain America: Civil War, two Avengers films, and two films of his own) made $880 million. The second, released this past summer, made more than $1 billion. (After our time together, Holland also became perhaps the first Marvel exile, when Sony—the corporation that owns the Spider-Man franchise—took Spider-Man back from Marvel, to whom they’d loaned the character in 2015. What this means for the future of Spider-Man remains hazy, beyond the fact that Holland will still be playing the character. “I’m not shy about expressing how incredible the last five years have been with Marvel,” Holland wrote me, after news of the split broke. “I’ve truly had the time of my life, and in so many respects, they have made my dreams come true as an actor. Sony has also been really good to me, and the global success of Spider-Man: Far From Home is a real testament to their support, skill and commitment. The legacy and future of Spidey rests in Sony’s safe hands. I really am nothing but grateful, and I’ve made friends for life along the way.”)

In some ways the financial success of Holland’s two Spider-Man films understates what Holland has become to the vast teenage audience who seek and sustain themselves on comic-book movies. Holland is newly 23 and in the right light still looks 16. He is the attainable one, the audience surrogate. He is their star. In Holland's first onscreen appearance as Spider-Man, in 2016's Captain America: Civil War, Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark shows up at young Peter Parker's apartment in Queens, not exactly sure whom he's even looking for: “You're the…Spiderling? You're Spider-Boy?”