Tom Holland’s latest role helped him have a better relationship with his own mental health.
The “Spiderman: No Way Home” star told Entertainment Weekly in a piece published Tuesday that he has been sober for a year and four months — and that his role in the upcoming Apple TV+ mini-series “The Crowded Room” allowed him to recognize his own “triggers” and “things that stress me out.”
In the upcoming series, which premieres June 9, Holland stars as Danny, a teen whose mental health is called into question after he is arrested for a crime he may not have committed.
“Learning about mental health and the power of it, and speaking to psychiatrists about Danny’s struggles, has been something that has been so informative to my own life,” Holland explained.
“I’m no stranger to the physical aspects of the job, doing the whole action-movie thing,” Holland continued. “But the mental aspect, it really beat me up, and it took a long time for me to recover afterward, to sort of get back to reality.”
Holland admitted that nine months into filming “The Crowded Room,” he struggled to separate his own identity from his character’s.
“I was seeing myself in him, but in my personal life,” the actor, who is dating his “Spider-Man” co-star Zendaya, recalled. “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.’”
The actor said he opted not to do this because they were in the middle of shooting, but described the incident as “unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
Holland told Entertainment Weekly that one of his triggers is social media, and he has taken a few social media hiatuses throughout his career. In August 2022, when the actor announced he was going to take another break, he explained that he gets “caught up and I spiral when I read things about me online,” and explained that using apps like Instagram and Twitter can be “very detrimental to my mental state.”