‘Spider-Man’ Star Tom Holland Responds to Stan Lee

Tom Holland received high praise from Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee this weekend and now the Avengers: Infinity War actor is responding to the Marvel Comics legend’s kind words.

Lee, who recently gained control over his Twitter account and has been increasingly active on the social media platform in recent weeks, wrote yesterday that Holland’s portrayal of the character created by Lee along with Steve Ditko in 1962 is great and that the actor is an exact fit for how he envisioned the iconic character.

“I think [Tom Holland] is a great Spider-Man,” Lee wrote. “He is the exact height and age I envisioned when I first wrote Spider-Man. Spidey was never supposed to be too large. How is my friend Tom doing?”

Today, Tom responded.

“Thanks very much Stan. It all started with you sir. Looking forward to catching up soon bud,” Holland wrote.

While Holland’s response to Lee is respectful, polite, and comes across as subdued, there’s no doubt that the actor is thrilled that the 95-year-old Lee is pleased with his portrayal of the iconic character. Holland has been open about his lifelong love of Spider-Man, previously sharing on Instagram photos of his younger self posing with a Tobey Maguire Spider-Man toy as well as a 2015 photo of himself with a childhood Spider-Man costume, one that the actor told Graham Norton was worn so much it still smells.

“I slept in that thing, that thing still stinks today,” Holland said in April. “There’s no washes that can make that thing wearable.”

Holland’s love of the character is part of what lead him to want to play Spidey as an actor and, in a recently resurfaced video from around 2013, Holland revealed that he’d love to play Spider-Man. It was a goal that, at the time, he thought probably wouldn’t happen right away considering that Andrew Garfield had just played the webslinger in Sony’s reboot The Amazing Spider-Man.
Interestingly, that dream kind of connects to something Lee wrote after his praise of Holland. In a second tweet yesterday, Lee wrote about the challenges he faced getting Spider-Man to print and advised fans to never give up on their dreams.

“Never give up on your dreams,” Lee wrote. “When I first wrote Spider-Man my publisher said I was crazy because people hate spiders and insects and he was not going to publish it. But I never gave up, until it was published.”

Sticking with his dreams clearly paid off for Holland. Avengers: Infinity War is a huge hit and the praise from Lee is pretty great, too.

Avengers: Infinity War is in theaters now. Fans can next see Holland’s Spider-Man in the untitled Avengers 4 on May 3, 2019 and the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming on July 5, 2019.