Tom Holland had tasted fame at an unprecedented level at a very early age. For the British star, Hollywood was his playground sandbox and movies were his medium of first expression. But with such an exposed world also comes its pitfalls which, in the case of Tinsel Town, often claim a very steep price.
In the years since his Marvel fame, Holland found the price was asking too much of his sanity, peace, and mental health. His function as a celebrity in modern society was getting increasingly demanding, from signing autographs and taking pictures to bearing the brunt of dissenting fans and tabloids who could not comprehend his need to log out of social media.
With his year-long break now coming to an end, Tom Holland comes forward with a fresh perspective and a better understanding of how to handle the press, along with some sage advice about not swimming upstream.
Tom Holland: The Angst of a Hollywood Hero
The Spider-Man: Homecoming star – who got over the trauma of being the only 9-year-old boy in an all-boys rugby school doing ballet in the gym for 2 straight years – could not survive the brutality of the press and the tabloids. As he prepared himself for a year-long hiatus from the world of media and entertainment, the online chatter tore into him with the viciousness of wolves.
However, the two events were never correlated. For Tom Holland, a hiatus was always what he had wanted after the pressure of filming in the comic circuit, followed in quick succession by blockbusters like The Devil All the Time, Cherry, Uncharted, Chaos Walking, Onward, and The Crowded Room.
After adopting the life of an actor from the age of 9, a year-long break was long overdue and much deserved. But the media circuit and the fan mob were of another opinion entirely. It was not his exhausting work hours and grueling filming schedule that were being dissected in the online press forum. Instead, the discourse that was being presented to the public was that Tom Holland suffered a mental health crisis and had to escape the spotlight to recuperate.
Tom Holland Addresses The Crowded Room Fiasco
As a young and formative actor who experienced adolescence, teenage angst, fame, wealth, adulation, and adulthood all under the public’s scrutinizing eye, Tom Holland turned out to be much ahead of his years in terms of maturity. Perhaps it was this maturity that got lost in translation for a boy-king sent to dominate the masses at the age of 19 by representing the biggest Marvel IP and the most famous comic book superhero of all time aka Spider-Man.
When a more serious and taxing role came along, Holland set out to prove his mettle by performing in the groundbreaking psychological thriller produced by Apple TV – the domain of underrated artsy classics. When The Crowded Room failed to draw in a crowd and scored a paltry 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, Tom Holland bore the brunt of criticism, receiving it harder than he should’ve ever had to.
In a podcast interview with Rich Roll on 18 October 2024, Holland revealed:
I was actually very disappointed with how the press ran with it. But then you can’t fight with the press; you’re swimming upstream. And I kinda just rolled with the punches and let it happen. I think it’s really disappointing that a young person in my position who’s lucky enough to have the power to say, “I’m gonna take some time off for myself” gets painted as something negative.
We all work too hard. And we should put our lives first. I’ve always lived by the idea that I work to live, I don’t live to work. And I think that it’s really unfortunate that that’s what people took from the idea of me taking a break.
Simultaneously, however, Holland appreciates the level of pressure that professional athletes operate under. Olympians like Simone Biles and Michael Phelps have spoken out in the press about taking time off to heal and recharge to get back to full operating capacity to perform at the Olympics. When talking about the perception of mental health in Hollywood, Holland claims,
Pressure is only natural and pressure is a privilege to a certain degree. But sometimes too much pressure is too much pressure. I took a break from social media once and felt the need to announce it because I didn’t want people to worry that I had disappeared or something. And that also was met with a negative reaction, like, “You can’t hack it. Oh, you can’t handle social media.”And I just think that sometimes it’s important to look up.
With a year’s worth of distance from the constant media chatter or being stalked and hunted by the paparazzi, Tom Holland prepares to return to mainstream media with a bang just as Marvel prepares to launch its Phase Six roster.
The Crowded Room is streaming on Apple TV+.
