‘The Odyssey’ Star Tom Holland Surpasses Zoe Saldaña to Become the Highest-Grossing Actor of All Time

Tom Holland has spent 2026 turning into an unstoppable box office force, with two massive releases landing within weeks of each other and reshaping his entire career trajectory. What started the year as a respectable but unremarkable ranking on the all-time earnings list has snowballed into one of the fastest ascents Hollywood has ever seen.

That climb accelerated dramatically in late August, when ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ pushed past $2.33 billion worldwide and vaulted Holland past Chris Pratt into third place on the all-time lead actor earnings list, trailing only Zoe Saldaña and Scarlett Johansson. Just weeks earlier, Holland had been sitting sixth on that same list with roughly $13.6 billion in career grosses, meaning he leapfrogged three names in barely a month.

Now, as of September 13, Holland has completed that ascent entirely. He has officially overtaken Saldaña to become the highest-grossing actor in film history, with his total earnings climbing to approximately $15.5 billion against her roughly $15.4 billion mark.

That final push came courtesy of the same two films responsible for his earlier climb. Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey,’ in which Holland plays Telemachus, has surpassed $1.4 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film ever and the biggest release of Nolan’s entire career. ‘Brand New Day,’ meanwhile, has added more than $2.4 billion to Holland’s total, currently sitting as the third highest-grossing film of all time behind only ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and just ahead of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water.’

What makes Holland’s rise even more striking is how few films it took him to get there. Across 24 leading roles, he’s averaging $622.1 million per film, comfortably the highest per-film average of anyone in the top 10, ahead of Pratt’s $522.7 million and Saldaña’s $468.8 million.

At just 30 years old, Holland is also by far the youngest actor to ever claim the top spot on this list, a distinction that stood out even before he passed Saldaña, back when he was still sitting in third place as the youngest name in the entire top 10.

Saldaña’s own reign at the top wasn’t especially long. She had claimed the number one spot back in January thanks to the success of ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash,’ taking the crown from Johansson, who herself had previously overtaken Samuel L. Jackson for the honor. That kind of rapid turnover at the very top of the list underscores just how competitive the modern blockbuster landscape has become, especially as franchise films continue pushing global grosses to previously unthinkable heights.

It’s also worth noting just how heavily the current top 10 skews toward one shared universe. Nine of the ten actors on the list, including Holland, Saldaña, Johansson, Pratt, Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Vin Diesel, and Chris Evans, all built at least part of their fortunes through Marvel Cinematic Universe roles, a reminder of just how dominant that franchise has been in shaping modern box office history.

With both ‘Brand New Day’ and ‘The Odyssey’ still playing in theaters and continuing to add to his total, Holland’s lead at the top could keep growing in the weeks ahead rather than settling into a final number anytime soon. For an actor who spent years known primarily as the MCU’s youngest Spider-Man, becoming the single highest-grossing performer in movie history marks an almost unthinkable milestone.

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