Failed romances and party lifestyle of sex thimble Tom Hollander
THE diminutive star of Sunday night telly has reined in his partying ways to make the big time.
Tom Hollander is currently wowing audiences in BBC’s The Night Manager and ITV’s Doctor Thorne, which last weekend pulled in joint ratings of 10million.
And while the 5ft 4in actor is only just making it big on TV, he’s already had a starring role on the party circuit.
Tom’s A-list celebrity pals include Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson and Hollywood director Sam Mendes.
He also has a string of glamorous exes including socialites Daphne Guinness, 48, and upper-crust interior designer Fran Hickman, 32. A relationship with heiress Jemima Goldsmith, 42, hit the rocks around the time she met comic Russell Brand.
And while Tom, 48, is open about wanting to settle down and start a family, he admitted recently: “I am single. Acting can make it hard to have profound
relationships if you’re not careful.
“You get into this pattern of three-month, four-month jobs and what’s the next adventure.”
Close friends, however, suggest his behaviour off screen might have something to do with his failure to find a long-lasting relationship.
One young woman told The Sun how she was once approached by the actor at a celebrity-filled fashion bash in Shoreditch, East London.
She revealed: “He’s been a regular on the London party scene for a while and is always a gregarious figure right at the centre of attention.
“A few months ago I saw him and he came over to introduce himself to our group of girls in their early 20s.
“I recognised him and at first, thought it was quite funny to hear him using corny chat-up lines.”
Tom is the first to admit his party days got out of hand and he has made a decision to tone it down.
He said: “I don’t go to quite so many these days. Eventually you think, ‘Come on, better be a bit more serious’.
"There’s a sort of party circuit in London which eventually you notice is full of people who somehow are escaping themselves and everyone else by being in a room full of others, ironically. It’s a way of avoiding intimacy.”
Tom’s romantic disasters started early, when he fancied a school friend who didn’t return his affections.
He revealed: “I had a big crush on a friend who was a girl but that was unrequited. She was the first to say, ‘We better not go out together, it’ll spoil our friendship’. A standard line but it was true in that case — we’re still friends and I’m godfather to her child.”
But while his flirting hasn’t secured a girlfriend, it has worked for his career. He is candid about using it to get acting roles — but by impressing gay men rather than potential partners.
He once revealed: “For years I was accommodating when it came to my sexuality.
I didn’t feel particularly gay but I was half-pretty and boyish. A lot of gay people seemed to have influential positions in the theatre so I went along with it, up to a point.
“Soon this affected the parts I got. I graduated from restoration fops to actual gay people.
“To date I have pretended to be about 11 different gay men and one gay woman, essentially for financial gain.”
Although Tom — who also stars in BBC comedy Rev — is charming and outgoing, friends say the star is very sensitive about his height.
Tom has said: “I never thought of myself as being short. Being an actor has made me much more conscious of it than I would have been otherwise.
“Let’s be clear, I’d never have been on the list for James Bond so I’m not labouring under that misapprehension.”
For a man with a solid career in TV and film roles in Pirates of the Caribbean and Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation to his name, he is surprisingly quick to take offence.
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He had a dramatic and very public falling out with Dame Joan Collins after they starred in The Clandestine Marriage together in 1999.
Joan, 82, had invited Tom to dinner but he didn’t take her up on the offer until months later, while he was staying with actor pal Liam Neeson and his now late wife Natasha.
Afterwards she left him a voicemail to confirm the appointment but forgot to hang up and he heard her say: “Urgh. I hope he doesn’t come. Really. I’m so tired. I invited him to stay weeks ago and he never got back and now apparently he’s having a more glamorous time up the road.”
Tom was furious and published the transcript of the voicemail in a piece he wrote for The Spectator magazine.
He wrote: “I ranted by the pool, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe it, what a total bitch. I only rang to be polite, I didn’t even want to go in the first place.”
Tom’s very middle-class background is a sore point too. He was born in Bristol, the son of teachers, and raised in Oxford. The family background was academic and musical, going back to his grandfather.
Tom attended Abingdon School, whose yearly boarding fee is £36,960, and read English at Cambridge.
His sister Julia also studied at Cambridge and went on to direct at the English National Opera. Julia has now become a full-time writer.
But Tom doesn’t think his posh upbringing helped his career. Last week he sounded off over recent complaints in the media that posh people find it easier to get acting jobs.
He said: “When I started in the profession there were very visible actors who were Scottish, Welsh or regional.
“Lots of working-class-hero leading actors, it was not fashionable to sound posh. Now I’m middle-aged it’s fashionable to sound posh if you are the generation behind me.
“Isn’t it just that three actors who seem to have gone to public school are getting highly visible work?
“Drama schools say if arts funding is cut people can’t afford to go, but I didn’t go to drama school.”
Perhaps Tom’s prickly nature can be traced back to the bullying he received at Abingdon, where he was head chorister and appeared in a minor TV drama aged just 14.
“My voice broke very late,” he said. “I think that deep down I knew that once it broke my self-esteem would plummet as I’d never be head chorister again.
“So my balls stayed tucked up for a long time. I found it difficult to make friends and I was bullied quite a lot. There was a social kingpin in my year who decided I was not acceptable to the gang, perhaps because I’d done a bit of acting on TV and he was jealous.
“It was psychological torture rather than physical. It left me with a slightly lifelong persecution complex.”
Even now, as he wins critical and popular success for his twin Sunday night dramas, the young choirboy cowering from the bullies is still very much part of his character.
“Showbusiness is not conducive to mental stability,” he said.
“It’s a constant rollercoaster of adrenaline spikes and devastating let-downs. There’s something about seeing a face from the telly in real life that makes people deranged.
“It happens to me too. I slightly lose my mind.”