Tom Holland is the boyfriend or husband we all wish we had. Seeing him on the red carpet with Zendaya – so sweet, thoughtful and never over the top – it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with him. However, Anne Hathaway, who spent several months filming with him Odysseywent even further, going so far as to describe him not as her dream partner, but as her ideal son.
The actress, already mother to Jonathan and Jack, announced in late June that she was pregnant with her third child with husband Adam Shulman. In Christopher Nolan’s film, she plays Penelope, the mother of Holland’s Telemachus, and during a promotional interview with New York publication eTalk, she drew parallels between her on-screen role and her real life. “As a mom in real life, I really hope all my kids turn out to be as amazing as my on-screen kid,” Hathaway said. “Tom is like the son of dreams.”
Character played by the star The Devil Wears Prada is the wife of Odysseus, played by Matt Damon, who spends ten years fighting in the Trojan War and another ten years trying to return home.
In the epic poem, Penelope was 15 years old when she gave birth to Telemachus. Hathaway is 13 years older than Holland, and she fits into the role perfectly. “It was really interesting to convey what the world I live in was like and what my idea of being a loving mother was like 3,000 years ago,” she said during a stop on her promotional tour. “There was no such thing as gentle parenting in Ancient Greece! The stakes were very, very high. And sometimes she needed to scare (Telemachus) to keep him safe. It just made me grateful that I feel like I have more options now.”
“I don’t know what it’s like to raise a teenage boy,” she added. “My children are still very young, at least they feel young.”
Despite this, she is sure: she would like them to be like Holland when they grow up. Nolan’s film, which features a star-studded cast including Holland’s wife Zendaya as the goddess Athena, also stars Holland.
They got married secretly a few months ago. They rarely talk about their personal lives, but Zendaya recently revealed how exactly her husband wanted to break the news to her that Nolan – her favorite director – had cast her in a film. She was “already over the moon” for her husband: “And then he came home and said, ‘I need you to read something.’
“And I thought, ‘Is this the thing we just read last night?’ – she continued. “And he’s like (nods his head), ‘But now read this with (Athena) in mind.'”
A dream come true and an ideal husband.
Originally published in Vanity Fair Italy.