Tom Holland has been clean for a year and four months and claimed this week that he has learnt to know his ‘triggers’.
The 26-year-old Spider-Man star opened out about the toll his new position has taken on him and said that he has been working on his mental health.
The Crowded Room, Tom’s next production, will air on Apple TV on June 9, and the character is one of the British actor’s most difficult ever.
The ten-part series will focus on multiple personality disorder, with Tom starring as Danny Sullivan, a reclusive adolescent who is arrested in New York in 1979 after a shooting at the Rockefeller Centre.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about playing Danny, Tom shared: ‘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 also said how useful it was to learn to’recognize triggers’ and things that’stress [him] out,’ such as social media.
Tom stated that working on the programme had a significant impact on his mental health in ways he had never experienced before.
He said: ‘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.’
Recalling an incident nine months after filming, he added: ‘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”.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CrbKiDzt7z5/
‘And, obviously, we were mid-shooting, so I decided not to… It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.’
Fortunately, his co-stars rallied behind him, particularly Sasha Lane, who portrays his buddy and flatmate Ariana.
The Crowded Room was written by Akiva Goldsman of A Beautiful Mind, who also acts as an executive producer alongside Alexandra Milchan for EMJAG Productions and Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan, and Michael Schaefer of New Regency.
Amanda Seyfried joins Tom in the fascinating ensemble as Rya, a clinical psychologist who combines her job with the responsibilities of being a single mother.
Emmy Rossum, who plays Danny’s long-suffering mother Candy, joins the cast as well.
Meanwhile, Christopher Abbott plays Stan, Danny’s lawyer who also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his Vietnam War experiences.