Tom Holland to take break from acting for sake of mental health

Tom Holland has announced he will take a year-long break from acting, citing mental health reasons.

The Spider-Man and Uncharted star was talking as he promoted his latest role, in Apple TV+‘s psychological thriller series The Crowded Room, in which he plays a character based on Billy Milligan, the first person in the US to be found not guilty by reason of insanity on the basis of dissociative identity disorder.

The show marks his first time as a producer. Speaking to Extra yesterday (June 7), the actor explained that juggling the dual roles left him burned out. “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.”

Despite saying that he “loved the learning curve” of taking a on a producer’s role for the first time, Holland went on to outline that he will take a hiatus. “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 went on. “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.”

It is not the first time that Holland has frankly discussed his mental health in the media, having previously talked about recognising triggers to negative mental health episodes, his sobriety, and his breaks from social media.

In 2021, he went as far as to say that he is unsure if his long-term future is as an actor. “I don’t even know if I want to be an actor,” he told Sky News. “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.”

The Crowded Room begins tomorrow (June 9) on Apple TV+. Holland stars opposite Amanda Seyfried. The series was written by Akiva Goldsman, best known for penning the script for the 2001 drama A Beautiful Mind.