Tom Holland Reveals He’s Been Sober For Over A Year
Tom Holland is opening up about being sober. Holland’s latest project, Apple TV+’s The Crowded Room series has helped the actor recognize his own “triggers.” The 26-year-old Spider-Man: No Way Home star told Entertainment Weekly in a new interview yesterday (May 9) that he has learned a lot about “mental health and the power of it.”
The English actor added that speaking to psychiatrists about his character Danny Sullivan’s struggles has been “something that has been so informative to my own life.” In the show, Holland’s Danny is a young man who accidentally lands himself in trouble after being arrested for a crime he did not commit.
RELATED: Tom Holland Is Taking A Social Media Break For His Mental Health
To better understand his character, Holland had to challenge take on the mental toll to nail the role. Though the star is “no stranger to the physical aspects of the job doing the whole action movie thing,” the mental aspect was difficult for him. He told the publication, “It took a long time for me to recover afterward, to sort of get back to reality.”
Mental Health Struggles
After nine months of filming, Holland realized he needed to disconnect from his character for the sake of his mental health. “I was seeing myself in him, but in my personal life, I remember having a bit of a meltdown at home and thinking, like, ‘I’m going to shave my head. I need to shave my head, because I need to get rid of this character,'” he shared on Monday. “And, obviously, we were mid-shooting, so I decided not to. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
Holland hopes fans who check out the new show will “have more respect and more sympathy for people who are going through mental health issues” following his experience. The actor added that he wants people to feel educated about the “powers of mental health, the struggles, [and] our incredible abilities to survive.”
Although Holland didn’t specify what substance he is abstaining from, he previously discussed wanting to take a break from alcohol during an April 2020 virtual appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. When asked if he was having issues with his roommates amid the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, Holland replied, “Not really ‘cause we’re drunk all the time. I actually said this weekend that I was going to stop drinking for a week, I was going to have a week off. And then literally Monday morning, Ryan Reynolds sent me a case of gin.”
The Crowded Room premieres on AppleTV+ on June 9. Watch the trailer below: