Tom Holland is taking a break from acting after his latest project took a huge toll on his mental health.
Tom, 27, is starring in the forthcoming Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room, which premieres later this week, on June 9. In the psychological thriller, which explores the subjects of trauma and mental wellbeing, Tom portrays an antisocial young man named Danny who is mistakenly accused of being the culprit of a shooting.
Last month, Tom revealed that the process of shooting The Crowded Room led him to have a “meltdown” after he struggled to differentiate between his real life self and his character, Danny.
“I’m no stranger to the physical aspects of the job doing the whole action-movie thing. 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,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
“I was seeing myself in [Danny], but in my personal life,” Tom added, before going on to reveal that he found himself having “a meltdown” over it.
“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 said. “And, obviously, we were mid-shooting, so I decided not to. ... It was unlike anything I've ever experienced before.”
Now, Tom has opened up a little further about the difficult experience, revealing to Extra TV this week that he was completely “terrified” to take on the role in the first place.
“I just was terrified by the idea of playing this character,” he shared, before adding: “I just really agreed that it was time to tell the story about mental health — mental health that is brought on by trauma. And educate some people into how crazy it can be and how your mind is so powerful — it can work for good, and it can work for bad — and it just really resonated with me.”
Going on to explain why he had such a “tough time” on set, Tom noted that the added pressure of being a producer for the series made things all the more overwhelming.
“It was a tough time for sure. We were exploring certain emotions that I have definitely never experienced before, and then on top of that being a producer dealing with the day-to-day kind of problems that come with any film set added that extra level of pressure,” he said.
“I really enjoyed it, but then again, the show did break me,” he admitted, before revealing that he ended up escaping to Mexico when he was in need of a break.
“There did come a time where I was sort of like, ‘I need to have a break.’ I disappeared. I went to Mexico for a week and had some time on a beach. And I’m now taking a year off, and that is a result of how difficult this show was,” he shared.
In the meantime, Tom has remained focused on catching up with his friends and family in order to stay as relaxed as possible.
“I’ve been seeing my family. I've been seeing my friends. I've been playing golf. I've been, you know, going to the garden center and buying plants and doing my best to keep them alive and all that sort of stuff. I've just been trying to be, you know, regular bloke from Kingston and just relax,” he said of what he’s been up to.
And in spite of his difficult experience, Tom went on to note that filming The Crowded Room did have some benefits.
Explaining that he’s far more confident since taking on the role, Tom said he feels like he’s “grown up” more in the past 10 months than he has in his “entire career.”
“I feel very confident in my capabilities as an actor. I feel like I can handle confrontation better. I feel like I can deal with certain situations that I think before would have really set me off and now I just take it in my stride,” he said.
“I feel like I’ve grown up a lot, perhaps more so in the 10 months of making this show than I have in my entire career,” he added.
