Tom Holland is opening up about his sobriety and mental health. In a May 9 interview with Entertainment Weekly about his new Apple TV+ series “The Crowded Room,” the Marvel star revealed that he decided to focus on his mental wellness because of his work on the series and that he is one year and four months sober.
In the series, Holland plays Danny Sullivan, a man arrested in a shooting in the late ’70s. Through a series of conversations with investigator Rya Goodwin (played by Amanda Seyfried), Danny begins to understand himself and make sense of his complicated past. But the emotionally heavy scripts and intense filming schedule — they shot 130 days in a row — began to weigh on Holland. He said he was used to going to physical extremes to play a superhero, “But the mental aspect, it really beat me up and it took a long time for me to recover afterwards, to sort of get back to reality.”
“I was seeing myself in him, but in my personal life,” Holland told the outlet about his connection to the character. “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.’ And, obviously, we were mid-shooting, so I decided not to . . . It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
The experience inspired Holland to seek mental healthcare himself. “Learning about mental health and the power of it, and speaking to psychiatrists about Danny and Billy’s struggles, has been something that has been so informative to my own life,” he told Entertainment Weekly, adding that he now recognizes triggers and things that stress him out, like social media. He added that he hopes the series will allow others to “have more respect and more sympathy for people who are going through mental health issues.”
Back in August 2022, Holland explained to fans why he was taking a social media break. “I get caught up, and I spiral when I read things about me online,” he said in a video posted to his Instagram account. “And ultimately, it’s very detrimental to my mental state, so I decided to take a step back and delete the app.” He said that Instagram and Twitter can be “overstimulating” and “overwhelming.” He also directed fans to a UK charity called Stem4 that has four apps that aim at helping teens to manage feelings of anxiety and depression.
Holland has mostly stayed off his public-facing social media since, though fans have noticed him in the likes and comments of some of girlfriend Zendaya‘s Instagram posts.