It is not every day a million dollars shows up in your account by accident.
But The White Lotus star Tom Hollander has revealed it happened to him when he received a paycheque intended for Spiderman actor Tom Holland.
Speaking to Late Night host Seth Meyers, Hollander said: “We were with the same agents briefly and people in the accounts department got confused.
“It’s been very difficult, because you know I was here first but he’s enormously famous,” he added jokingly.
Explaining how he discovered the accidental payment, Hollander said he was watching a friend in the theatre who was being paid £300.
“I sat smugly in the audience having just done a BBC show for £30,000 or something which was going to get me through the next year or so, and I was thinking, ‘Well, this is marvellous, I’m very prosperous.’”
At the interval, he checked his emails and saw one containing a payslip labelled as “Box office bonus for The Avengers”.
“It was an astonishing amount of money,” the 56-year-old told Meyers. “It was not his salary. It was his first box office bonus. Not the whole box office bonus, the first one. And it was more money than I’d ever [seen]. It was a seven-figure sum.”
“My feeling of smugness disappeared,” he added.
Holland, who is dating Euphoria star Zendaya, has played Spiderman in six Marvel Cinematic Universe films.
Hollander said: “I obviously don’t actually get mistaken for him, but in non-visual contexts, I’m mistaken for him all the time.
“Talking to utility companies… or when I’m introduced to somebody’s very excited, then confused, then disappointed children.”
Other celebrity mix-ups
- In November 2022, physicist Brian Cox and actor Brian Cox told the BBC how their identical names have caused confusion. The men said they often arrive somewhere to find that people were expecting ‘the other’ Brian Cox.
- Back in 2016 the internet went into meltdown over a photo of Groundhog Day actor Bill Murray who looked remarkably similar to Tom Hanks.
- Even celebrities are guilty of mixing up their friends, as was the case at the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscars after party when Lady Gaga mistook Australian actress Isla Fisher for Amy Adams.
- Sometimes, one doppelganger is not enough – Sex Education’s Emma Mackey and comedy actress Jaime Pressly have both been likened to Barbie star Margot Robbie.
- US actresses Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas Howard look so similar, director Ron Howard thought Chastain was his daughter in a shop.
- And lastly, a mistaken identity can sometimes turn someone into an accidental celebrity. In 2006 Guy Goma turned up for a job interview at the BBC only to end up on air when he was mistaken for being computer expert, Guy Kewney.
© BBC News