In a career defined by blockbuster spectacle and superhero resilience, Tom Holland admits there is one film he can barely sit through without breaking down. It isn’t a Marvel epic or a dramatic live-action role, but a deeply personal animated story about two brothers searching for something they lost before they were old enough to understand it.
That film is Onward.
“I can’t watch it without sobbing,” Holland has confessed—calling the project both the most painful and the most proud performance of his career. Behind the pastel fantasy and magical road trip lies a story rooted in real grief, one that hit uncomfortably close to home for the actor.
A Pixar Story Born From Real Loss
The emotional core of Onward comes directly from its director, Dan Scanlon, whose childhood tragedy shaped the entire film. Scanlon lost his father in a car accident when he was just one year old; his older brother was only three. They grew up without any memory of their father’s voice—until years later, when a relative discovered an old cassette tape.
On it, their father said just two words: “Hi” and “Goodbye.”
That haunting detail became the soul of Onward. In the film, Holland’s character, Ian Lightfoot, obsessively replays a recording of his father, clinging to the sound of a voice he never truly knew. For Holland, that detail was devastating.
When Fiction Collided With Reality
Unlike many voice-acting jobs, Onward demanded emotional presence. Scanlon insisted that Holland and Chris Pratt, who voices older brother Barley, record together whenever possible. The result was a fraternal chemistry that felt raw, lived-in, and painfully authentic.
For Holland—who is famously close with his own three brothers—the story unlocked a quiet fear he rarely talks about: the terror of loss inside a tight-knit family.
“The idea that a brother could become your emotional anchor, your stand-in parent,” Holland explained, “that just wrecked me.”
Recording sessions became moments of genuine catharsis. The vulnerability required for Ian Lightfoot—his anxiety, his longing, his grief—was unlike anything Holland had been asked to give in live-action blockbusters.
Painful, but Proud
Released in March 2020, just as the world shut down, Onward arrived during a collective moment of isolation and mourning. While its box office suffered, its emotional reputation only grew. Critics and fans praised Holland’s performance as one of Pixar’s most human portrayals of grief—quiet, awkward, and unresolved.
The film’s ending, unchanged from its earliest storyboards, lands as an emotional ambush: a realization that love sometimes arrives through the people who stay, not the ones we lose.
For Holland, that truth is what makes the film unbearable—and essential.
“I rarely cry at movies,” he admitted during press interviews. “But this one… knowing where it came from, and what it says about brothers—I just can’t handle it.”
A Lasting Echo of “Hello” and “Goodbye”
Onward endures because it understands something simple and devastating: that a voice, even a fragment of one, can carry a lifetime of love. For Tom Holland, the film is not just another credit—it’s a reminder of the fragile magic of family, and the unspoken promise to never take a single hello for granted.
And that is why, years later, he still can’t watch it without sobbing.