Today, I am joined by Tom Holland, widely known for his portrayal of the Marvel superhero Spiderman, and recently for his role in The Crowded Room. Beyond acting, Tom Holland is known for his friendly and charismatic personality, often delighting fans with his playful interactions and energetic interviews. 

In this episode, we get a glimpse of the true, behind-the-scenes, Tom Holland - the mental health struggles, dealing with anxiety, and getting sober. This episode will leave you with a deeper understanding of life, personal growth, and finding true happiness.

In this episode with Tom Holland, we discuss:
00:00 Intro
00:46 The Gift Of Supportive Parents
09:32 Tom Holland Addresses The “Nervous Breakdown” Rumors
14:24 On Being Diagnosed With Dyslexia
16:05 How Did Tom Holland Get Into Acting?
20:02 Tom Holland’s Love Of Sports
30:46 Recognizing Alcohol Addiction
40:41 How Sobriety Impacts Your Life & Career
45:25 Tom Asks Jay About Life As A Monk
49:32 Tom Holland’s Travel Bucket List
53:09 Tom Holland On Taking A Break From Acting 
57:50 Tom Holland’s Acting Techniques  
01:03:02 Tom Holland On Living In The USA
01:09:31 On Trusting Your Gut
01:15:48 Living A “Normal” Life & Staying Away From Hollywood
01:23:53 Swimming With Killer Whales
01:33:37 Tom Holland's Opinion On Pickleball
01:35:52 Who Are Tom Holland’s Inspirations?
01:40:26 Tom Holland Talks About Footballer Harry Kane
01:44:35 Tom on Final Five

Episode Resources:
Tom Holland | https://www.instagram.com/tomholland2013/?hl=en
Tom Holland | https://twitter.com/TomHolland1996

Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/

I just felt like I was so addicted to this kind of false version of my life that it was just taking over.

And the thing that really upset me is the press ran with that.

They were saying, Oh, look, he's not the perfect, happy-go-lucky kid you think he is.

He's having a nervous breakdown in New York.

If I was having a mental breakdown, that's not for you to report on.

They took the story in the wrong direction and they kind of painted people looking for help in the wrong light.

The number 1 health and wellness podcast.

A lot of studies show that how we were loved or unloved between the ages of 0 to 5 impact the next

years of our life and how we give love to ourselves and how we give love to others.

And so I was thinking, do you have a core memory or an experience with your family from childhood that kind of embodies the feeling you have about them now or that keeps you tied close to them?

I'd say sort of more than a memory is just a feeling that we, I could say all of my brothers and I had, was that because our dad's a comedian, his job only ever existed once we had gone to bed and our mom worked from home, she was a photographer.

So to us as kids, our parents didn't really work, They just were always home.

So we had this amazing foundation where no matter any time of the day, either mum or dad would be at the house.

And we felt so kind of solid as a family, which is why like I kind of have this dream of 1 day having kids and putting my work to bed and just kind of being there as a dad, because I really admire how my dad was around, you know, being a comedian is a very, very volatile job.

The only version of my dad I ever saw was the happy dad, let's go to the park.

We used to play this game called golf goals, where we would go down to the park, there's like this big blue metal goal, and we would just fire golf balls into that goal every day.

And he would give us 10 P every time a ball went in the goal.

And that was kind of the foundation of our golf and all that sort of stuff.

So for me, broader than a core memory was the idea of always feeling connected and safe within my family unit.

And I think a large portion of that is that my mum and dad have always been such a solid team and they've always been there for us.

Have they, as you've grown older, have they kind of opened up about some of the challenges that they were going through that they obviously didn't show you and your family when you were kids, because I can imagine we always talk about this, right?

Like being a comedian is extremely difficult because you're making everyone else laugh.

At the same time, it's a career path that, like you said, is completely volatile.

And how has that felt when you've gone from like seeing your parents always being happy to being like, oh wait, there was all this other stuff going on.

And it's not even sometimes thing that they've told us.

It's just things that we've grown up to recognize as a young kid.

You know, you're not looking to how's my mom feeling, how's my dad feeling?

And now as an older person, those are things I care about.

I wanna call my mom, cause I know it will brighten her day.

So that's all part of growing up, I guess.

So seeing the way in which my dad's job affects him or my dad's job affects my mum is something we've all sort of come to terms with and he's amazing at it.

I mean to be honest I say affect it doesn't really affect anyone he's so good at handling it which is a lot of why I feel like I am the way I am.

For example the crowded rooms come out the critics absolutely hated it they thought was the worst thing they've ever seen.

And I think a large part of my feeling towards that has come from my dad being able to do a gig, the gig not going well, him brushing it off his shoulder and just right onto the next 1.

Yeah, well, and first of all, I want to point out as well, so I've been watching The Crowded Room and me and my wife have been watching it together and we're actually really enjoying it.

We're actually loving it because I love a show that has mystery that's trying to like get me to figure it out and get me to think about it.

I'm kind of confused and I love stuff like that.

Like I'm a massive Christopher Nolan fan.

So all my favorite movies are Nolan movies.

And the reason why I love them is because I have no idea what's going on.

And I love puzzles and I love escape rooms and I love anything that's got me thinking, what is going on here and why can't I figure it out?

I admittedly watch it to go to sleep if I'm ever feeling stressed or overstimulated.

He's a magician, but I just watch him solve puzzles.

He like buys these Japanese like handcrafted puzzle boxes.

And he just solves them and I've started buying them.

And they come to the house and you sit down for 4 hours put it down pick it up and try and solve this puzzle and it's amazing.

I've had an unsolved Rubik's cube since I was like 11 but I but yeah so I watch his videos because there's just something about like the sound of the wood.

I'm a carpenter, so I love like craftsmanship and that sort of stuff.

So I love the way that these pieces are put together.

So watching him solve the puzzles I find so relaxing.

I think for so many of us, you know, getting bad reviews, perceptions, people talking about us, whatever that may be, whatever scale we live at can actually affect us.

And you saying that actually seeing your dad, letting him, seeing him shrug it off and seeing him move on actually really helped him.

Do you think that you've been able to create a bit more of a skill around that now, or is it something that happens naturally for you?

Because I'm guessing that there's a lot of people who are listening and watching going, Tom, that's pretty amazing that you can do that at your scale and your level, but you know, I'm still affected by that.

Or I really struggle when my mate says something.

Like I know, sure, number 1 thing I hear is like, most people don't chase their dreams because they're scared of what their mates will say.

Yeah, like I had this late, I was flying back last night as I was telling you, so I was on a plane from DC to London last night and the air hostess, she was wonderful, her name was Jeanette, she said to me, she was like, Jay, I really want to start a YouTube channel, but you know, you just got to block out what your friends are going to say, right?

So I guess, have you kind of figured out a little formula for it, or is it just natural because you saw your dad and it's become easier that way?

I think it's a little bit of both, really.

You know, I think it's something you definitely get better at.

I'm really lucky that I have an incredibly strong group of friends.

Like, 1 of my best mates just called me up earlier to say he'd seen the fifth episode and he's like, I know what happens in the show and I'm still loving it.

The people I'm watching it with have no idea what's going on, but they can't wait for the next 1.

So, you know, I really, really hold high the opinions of people that I really care about.

I'm also really lucky to have an amazing group of fans who are so supportive.

But I do think a lot of my lessons in life have come from my dad and the ways that he can deal with things, things that he hasn't done very well in the past that he's passed on to me.

I don't actually know if Christian Bale did say this, but I think he did.

But I think the quote is, if you have a problem with me, text me.

And if you don't have my number, you don't know me well enough to have a problem with me.

And I think that that is such a great piece of advice because as a celebrity, you live on this stage, you live out there, you kind of give out a version of yourself that you want people to see.

And that can be the version of yourself that they can have a problem with or they can love.

And there is a, you know, I feel like I'm quite authentic in my public persona, but I just try to really care about what my family thinks, what my friends think, what the people in my local community think.

I can't walk 5 feet without bumping into 1 of my mum's friends.

So yeah, so it's something I've been working on.

I try my best to not let that stuff affect me.

I'm not cold hearted or anything like that.

It does affect me, but I just try to move on and focus on the positives.

What was, did you ever see your dad deal with everything and you thought, wow, that was incredible?

Like, was there anything specific that you remember that like seeing him like tackle something and you thought, wow, that really impressed me, even if it was something really small in hindsight.

I think the thing I admire most about my dad is his resilience.

You know, he's someone who has had an incredibly successful career in his earlier life, and then later in life his career sort of plateaued and he struggled, and he's never stopped.

He's constantly grafting to get to where he wants to be.

And I think being a young kid and seeing your dad continually working as hard as he can to kind of put his best foot forward, for me, has been a huge drive for my work ethic.

I'll give it 100% or I'll give it nothing.

And I think a lot of that has come from my dad and seeing him deal with that.

The funny thing about my dad, as you talk about doing a bad gig, I must've seen him 20 times.

But maybe that's just because we're in the audience.

But he, but no, I owe a lot to my dad and a lot of the teachings are things he's told me and things I've just witnessed him do.

And was there ever a piece of feedback or a rumor or something you saw that did affect you, where you actually thought, or at least made you stop and go, God, I'm trying to see the positives, but this one's tough.

Like, like this actually made me have to pause and figure it out.

Something that did really upset me, I was in New York, I was shooting The Crowded Room, and I was having a really hard time with the job just because of how taxing it was, the emotional capacity that I was having to get to every day.

And I decided to delete my Instagram because I just felt like I was so addicted to this kind of false version of my life that it was just taking over.

I would be on set working, I'd come and sit in my chair and just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.

I was just obsessed with it, and I was obsessed to find out what people were saying and how people, what they thought about me.

So I decided to make an announcement, which unfortunately we have to do, and say that I'm taking a break from social media and I try to position myself and say like I'm taking a break from social media because I feel like my mental health will benefit from it and the thing that really upset me is the press ran with that and they tried to make out that I was having this mental breakdown.

And what upset me was, if I was having a mental breakdown, that's not for you to report on.

They took the story in the wrong direction and they painted again, this negative light on mental health, rather than saying, Oh, he's doing it.

They were saying, Oh, look, he's not the perfect, happy go lucky kid you think he is.

And I think that that was a really unfair line of journalism, let's say, because I just think it again kind of painted people looking for help in the wrong light, if you know what I mean.

It almost sounds like you were actually preemptively going, I'm doing this so that I don't go in that direction.

At least I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.

It's almost like I'm proactively seeing that I could end up in a position where I might have a breakdown, I don't want to be in that position, and so I'm responsibly saying, guys, I'm taking a break in order to protect myself.

Yeah, which makes a lot of sense and actually is quite admirable again.

Totally, and that's kind of what the message of the show is about.

Like the message of our show is that asking for help should be something that we celebrate.

If you're struggling, if you need help, if you feel bad and you wake up and you go to a friend, a therapist, a teacher, an employee or a colleague and say, I'm really struggling, I need some help.

That should be something that we give you a pat on the back.

And that for me, that announcement was kind of my olive branch and the press ran with it how they ran with it.

But to be fair, it kind of gave me a great drive to finish The Crowded Room in the way that we did, to like, if you're not going to listen to my personal message, then you have to listen to the message of my show.

You've reminded me actually, when you said that, because I think we naturally today think of therapists or doctors, but you mentioned teacher there.

And I was thinking, when I was going through a really rough time at school once, I remember my walk to school from the bus stop, I'd see a teacher every day that I was really close with at school, but you never talked to your teachers walking to school, right?

Yeah, But I was so lonely at the time that I remember like almost thinking like, well, he's the only person I can talk to because of other stuff that I was going through at school.

And I remember I started talking to him on the way to school.

He knows I go on about him everywhere and he avoids it because everyone's always like, oh, Jay's been talking about you, Jay's been talking about you.

But it was that exact feeling where it was like, he was someone that I felt I could open up to at that point in my life without feeling judged, without feeling like he was going to see me through another lens.

And just having that space to be seen for as a human who is going through stuff by a teacher was a huge, huge win.

And so, you know, it's, you are right that, that help can come in all different forms and it doesn't have to come in the ways that we expected to come in.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be a professional.

I go to my friends a lot and, you know, some friends are better than others in certain situations.

I've got some friends that are very much like pull your socks up and get on with it.

And then other friends who are like, come here and have a cry on my shoulder.

So I just really hope that that's what the show can do is sort of paint this positive picture of asking for help is something to be proud of.

And I want to go back a little bit because there's a lot of interviews that you've done and I've watched a lot of stuff over the time, but like we were talking about, a lot of it's soundbites because it's quick and short and like these entertainment interviews.

And that's why I was really grateful that you took out the time to do this.

But you were diagnosed, as far as I read, with dyslexia at age 7.

And I was wondering how a lot of our community and our audience is diagnosed as well, or some of them are not, but they're finding out later on in life.

Or how were you set up for success with that from day?

Because as an actor, you've got to learn lines, you've got to read lines.

There's a lot of activities that people would assume are quite challenging.

But you found a way and walk us through that a little bit.

My mum has always been really hands on with our education.

She, you know, really wanted us to just do our best.

Our dad always said, like, look, I don't care what grades you get.

As long as you try your best you try your best and that's all that we can ask for.

But yeah my dyslexia it's really just my spelling.

yeah you know like those sort of games that you play at Christmas.

Have you ever played the 1 we have to write down the answers that is such a good game.

It's basically a game where someone will read out a scenario or ask a question and then you have to answer the question to the best of your ability, but you can also bluff and lie.

And if you write somewhat a believing answer and people vote for your answer, you win.

But when I play it, everyone's like, what does that say?

But yeah, so my spelling was really the biggest hurdle.

I didn't do particularly well, but again, my parents said, as long as you try your best, then that's all we can ask for.

And acting, you started early too, age 9, right?

Like that was something that you started pursuing really early on in life.

And I feel, was that something that you were always sure about?

There's that famous viral TikTok that always goes around of you, you know, I can't, I don't know how old you were being asked, you know, what superhero would you play?

When you're older, you say, oh, maybe Spider-Man, right?

And it's like, and I wonder like how much of your acting career do you feel like you've manifested or there was a vision or a focus or is it more just like this was naturally what you were into and it grew?

I do believe in manifesting actually, I really do.

I think what's interesting about my career is this was never something I wanted.

My mum would take me to a dance class every Saturday and I got spotted through that dance class to audition for a show on the West End.

I, you know, it was such a cool experience.

An agent came to see the show the night that I was on.

All of a sudden I was on set with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts and we made The Impossible.

And to be perfectly honest with you, it was, it was just a hobby.

It was something that my mum would let me do on the summer holidays.

She was very keen that I kept my schooling up.

And there sort of came that time in England where you're in between GCSEs and A-levels and you're trying to figure out my...

When I was going through that, you could still drop out at A-levels.

And I had that moment where I was like, what do I want to do?

I could try and stay at school and figure out what I want to do, or this thing that's been a hobby, but my sort of summer holiday activity, which is acting, I could try and do that for a living.

And I've been so lucky that I've been, you know, offered jobs and all that sort of stuff.

I joined the Brit school because, you know, my mum was keen that I didn't go for school for an education, but went to school to expand my social skills and meet kids my own age.

All my friends when I was 15 were like 30 year old people, because they're all adults from the business.

think my mum was keen that I had some friends that are my age, who are now my best friends today.

I love the building blocks that are required to put a film together.

I love the collaboration on set between people from all different walks of life.

You know, a film set is a melting pot of all sorts of different people.

I read something that you said you were bullied for doing ballet.

Which obviously got you into playing the role of Billy Elliot, because it's ballet and tap, right?

And then you end up at the West End and you're on the main stage and everyone's seeing it, or was it kind of easy to navigate?

Because I feel like as a kid, doing ballet and tap must have been a little challenging.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't easy, but it also wasn't tough.

So you can imagine like the 1 kid in the school that does ballet.

There's going to be comments here and there.

It wasn't the easiest thing in the world.

There were kids that didn't understand why I was doing it or what I was doing it for.

No matter how many times I explained, like I'm the only guy in a class of 30 girls in tights.

I was like, guys, this is what you want to be doing.

But again, like it goes back to what we were saying about resilience and keeping your head down and crowded room was the hardest job I've ever had for all sorts of different reasons.

And there was a point in time where we were talking about do we shut this down and walk away from it because of how challenging it was.

And you know I dug my heels in I put my head down was like now I'm going to finish this I'm going to see it through.

And I think, you know, you learn from past experiences like that.

So I really am proud of the way everyone handled the crowded room.

And I think that stems from my childhood, my dad's experiences and all that sort of stuff.

Well, so I've got a confession as well to make.

I played, yeah, I played for my A team and I was, I was pretty good.

So I was, I was really into rugby because I went to rugby school and I loved football, but my school didn't play football and so I was like, no, I've got to be on the school's main team.

So I worked really hard to get on the team.

But after we played rugby on a Saturday, my mum forced me to go to dance class and part of it was ballet and tap as well.

Although I did not end up at the West End and play Billy Elliot, because I don't think Billy Elliot was brown.

What is the hardest thing Tom Holland has ever done?

What does Tom mean when he says he had "a boozy December" ?

What type of problems did he find in Februrary? (Choose two correct answers)

Tom finally gave up alcohol by his brithday.

What type of problems did he find in Februrary?

What positive effects has Tom noticed since he gave up drinking?

It was easy for Tom to give up alcohol in January.

Tom feels obliged to help other people stop drinking.

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TOM HOLLAND Gets Vulnerable About Mental Health & Overcoming Social Anxiety