Spider-Man actor Tom Holland announced he’s momentarily stepping back from his acting career.
After the British star struggled to play the role of producer and actor simultaneously, Holland revealed what pushed him to take a break from Hollywood.
“It was a tough time, for sure,” the 27-year-old said during an interview with Extra for his film The Crowded Room.
Holland is promoting the Apple TV+ thriller series, which he starred in and produced. Holland plays a character loosely based on the Campus Rapist Billy Milligan, a US man who claimed to have 24 alternate personalities and was the first individual to be found not guilty by reason of insanity based on dissociative identity disorder.
Speaking to Extra on Wednesday, Holland said that he had “loved the learning curve of becoming a producer,” but juggling those responsibilities while playing a character with severe mental illness had pushed him too far.
“I’m no stranger to hard work,” he said. “I’ve lived by the idea that hard work is good work. Then again, the show did break me. There did come a time where I needed a break and disappeared and went to Mexico for a week and had time on a beach and laid low. I’m now taking a year off, and that is a result of how difficult this show was. I am excited to see how it turns out. I feel like our hard work wasn’t in vain.
“It was a tough time, for sure,” he added. “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 problems that come with any film set, just added that extra level of pressure.”
Holland has previously spoken about protecting his mental health in the public eye, including taking a break from social media and being sober. He said the show helped him better understand his mental health, saying it helped him ” recognize triggers” and “things that stress me out.”
In 2021 he said he was considering giving up acting entirely, saying, “I don’t even know if I want to be an actor … I started acting when I was 11 and I haven’t done anything else, so I’d like to go and do other things. Genuinely, I’m sort of … having a midlife crisis – at 25, I’m having like a pre-midlife crisis.”
