From the outside, it makes complete sense that Nolan would pick Holland, a young actor from Kingston-upon-Thames who has such star quality that his rise has felt effortless. From a tear-jerking performance as Billy Elliot on the London stage aged 12, via Spider-Man to The Odyssey.
Nolan calls him “one of the great actors of his generation”, high praise from a director who, as Holland puts it, “is spoilt for riches with the list of actors that he’s worked with” – and whose movies are treated as major global events.
Did that mean Holland was daunted at the thought of working with one of cinema’s greats?
“Absolutely,” he tells me – but he took the approach that “I’ve got what I wanted and now it’s time to show him what I can do”.
But even the director himself was a little intimidated as he began adapting Homer’s 2,700-year old story. His last film, Oppenheimer, had just won seven Oscars and grossed around a billion dollars worldwide.
It’s quite a lot to live up to but “you have ways of coping”. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be his strategy.
Nolan’s son walked into his office when he was writing the new film and noticed that the Oppenheimer Oscar statuettes had disappeared.
“I said to him very seriously, I’m trying to write a new project and if I’ve got Oscars sitting on the shelf, think about how daunting that would be,” Nolan says.
“You can’t really think about what’s come before,” he adds.