Tom Holland made a major lifestyle change after a recent role.
The actor told Entertainment Weekly that he hasn’t had alcohol in one year and four months. The decision came after filming the forthcoming Apple TV+ crime thriller The Crowded Room.
Set in 1979, the series sees Holland play Danny Sullivan, a man who is arrested in connection with a shooting at Rockefeller Center. It’s loosely based on a true story, as well as the 1981 novel The Minds of Billy Milligan. Milligan suffered from dissociative identity disorder.
“I’m no stranger to the physical aspects of the job doing the whole action-movie thing,” he told EW. “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.”
The role made the 26-year-old think about how we deal with mental health and trauma.
“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.”
He said he hopes the series will urge viewers to “have more respect and more sympathy for people who are going through mental health issues.”
Holland continued, “I hope that people will feel educated about the powers of mental health, the struggles, [and] our incredible abilities to survive.”
In addition to playing the starring role in The Crowded Room, Tom Holland served as an executive producer for the project, which arrives June 9 on Apple TV+.
