Tom Holland Quits Acting: A ‘Traumatic’ Experience Caused A Year-Long Break

By James Mercado On Jun 14, 2023

If you’ve been following the news and are concerned that this actor won’t be appearing on screen much longer, you may be asking if Tom Holland is giving up acting.

He has been an actor since he was a small child and played the young and aspirational Billy Elliot in the West End version of Billy Elliot before becoming wildly popular as Peter Parker / Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

However, following an interview promoting The Crowded Room, the new program he developed and starred in, many fans are unsure if he will quit acting permanently.

In a discussion about the show’s idea with Entertainment Weekly, he described it as “an insight into the power of the human mind” and “the ways in which we can deal with trauma.”

He continued, “It’s a show that will take you on twists and turns — you’ll never know where you are or what’s going on — and then it will all come to a miraculous conclusion toward the end,” he continues.

“It’s a story about heartbreak. It’s a story about love. It’s a story about betrayal. And, most of all, it’s a story about a young kid’s determination to survive.”

Has Tom Holland decided to stop acting? Find out by reading on.

Is Tom Holland quitting acting?

Tom Holland’s acting career is ending. Tom Holland is not giving up acting, no. After finishing The Crowded Room, the 27 actors said they would take a year off. He’s already passed the midpoint of his acting sabbatical.

In an interview, he admitted to Extra that the show hurt his mental health. “I’m no stranger to hard work. I’ve lived by the idea that hard work is good work. Then again, the show did break me,” he recalled.

“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,” the Uncharted actor 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 portrays Danny Sullivan, a character based on Billy Milligan, in the show. His character is detained after his involvement in a shooting in New York City in 1979.

“I’m no stranger to the physical aspects of the job doing the whole action-movie thing,” he admits. “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.”

After his work was completed off-set, Holland recalls finding it challenging to distinguish between his real-life persona and his character. “I was seeing myself in him, but in my personal life,” he explained.

Daily Express shared a tweet in which Tom Holland stepped away from acting:

Tom Holland stepping away from acting for long time after being ‘broken’ by last role https://t.co/fVR9oiPgL9

— Daily Express (@Daily_Express) June 7, 2023

“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.”

Although he undoubtedly learned from the experience. “I’ve spent so long playing Nathan Drake and playing Spider-Man, who are characters that you can depend on, people you feel safe around, and, ultimately, people that feel really capable,” Holland spoke to Entertainment Weekly.

“I really enjoyed playing Danny in those earlier episodes where I was able to lean into my more vulnerable side.”

Another cast member, Sasha Lane received a shout-out for supporting him while he was on site.“She was so helpful for me, because there were moments on set where I really was struggling to understand Danny’s reasoning or Danny’s actions,” he stated.

“She would take me aside and was really open and willing to share some of her experiences that were so helpful in the moment.”

Holland, who has been clean for over a year, accepted his learnings from the show and hoped others would do the same.

“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,” When it comes to “identifying triggers” and “things that make me anxious,” like social media, he said.

He hopes that the program will influence viewers “have more respect and more sympathy for people who are going through mental health issues,” he also says, “I hope that people will feel educated about the powers of mental health, the struggles, [and] our incredible abilities to survive.”

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Holland stated that he is already well into his break in an interview with Live! with Kelly and Mark a week after the news first surfaced online. “It’s so funny. Obviously, The Crowded Room came out. We didn’t have very favorable reviews. So the press story was that I have taken this year off because of the reviews,” he stated.

“But I’m eight months into my year off. I’ve been chilling at home in London, going to Grand Prixes, playing golf…”

He also said: “I would like to say a massive thank you to my fans, and the people that have seen the show because we’re at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. I feel so grateful that I have a wonderful community of people that support me and are there for me, so I’m honored and really excited for the rest of the show to come out”

Is Tom Holland quitting Spider-Man?

Tom Holland won’t be giving up on Spider-Man, no. He told Inverse that the untitled Spider-Man 4 has “some stuff going on” that he’s “excited about.”

“Whether or not it’ll come to fruition, who knows?” Holland added. “But right now it’s looking pretty good, and we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios, teased Entertainment Weekly about what may happen to Spider-Man’s future in the near future. “All I will say is that we have the story,” Feige told the source. “We have big ideas for that, and our writers are just putting pen to paper now.”

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