Tom Holland revealed that he does not like Hollywood in a candid new interview.
The Spider-Man leading man, 27, admitted that the entertainment industry is ‘not for him’ and ‘scares’ him on Tuesday’s episode of Jay Shetty’s podcast.
‘Look, I really am a massive fan of making movies but I really do not like Hollywood, it is not for me,’ the British-born star — who also shared he was ‘enslaved’ by alcohol before getting sober elsewhere on the podcast — revealed.
‘The business really scares me. I understand that I’m a part of that business, and I enjoy my kind of interactions with it,’ he went on.
‘But that said, I am always looking for ways to kind of remove myself from it, to kind of just live as normal a life as possible.’
The actor went on to state that some of his friends have ‘lost themselves’ in the business.
‘I definitely think it has been an ongoing thought, which is don’t lose yourself,’ he explained.
‘I’ve seen so many people come before me and lose themselves, and I’ve had friends that I’ve grown up with that aren’t friends of mine anymore, because they’ve lost themselves to this business.’
‘I just am really, really keen to focus on what makes me happy, which is my family, it’s my friends. It’s my carpentry, my golf, the charity that my mom runs.’
‘Like, that is the stuff that makes me really happy, and that’s the stuff that I should protect.’
Holland has been acting since he was nine-years-old, and rose to worldwide fame playing Spider-Man in the Avengers and Spider-Man franchise.
In June he announced he would be taking a break from Hollywood. He says the break was already planned, but some have speculated it came after his recent Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room was widely panned by critics.
Elsewhere in the interview he revealed the reason he keeps his relationship with girlfriend Zendaya so private.
The actor gave a rare insight into his love life as he said his bond with the star, 26, is the ‘thing he keeps most sacred’.
Tom and Zendaya have kept their romance low-key since they were first linked in 2017 after starring opposite one another in the Spider-Man franchise.
He said: ‘My relationship is the thing I keep most sacred. I don’t talk about it. I try my best to keep it as private as possible.’
‘We both feel like that is the healthiest way for us to move on as a couple, so I do try to keep as removed from Hollywood as possible.’
It comes just after last week Tom gushed over his romance with Zendaya and told how he is ‘lucky’ to have her in his life.
He sweetly described their relationship as ‘worth its weight in gold’ as he spoke about how they can share their life and work experiences with each other.
During the wide-ranging interview Holland also opened up about his journey to sobriety and how he realized that he was addicted to alcohol.
He revealed publicly in May that he’s been sober for one year and four months, adding it was one of the hardest things he’s ever done.
Holland said he realized he had a problem when he attempted to go a month without drinking: ‘It was all I could think about. I was waking up thinking about it, I was checking the clock, “When’s it 12?” And it just really scared me.’
‘I was like, “Wow, maybe I have a little bit of an alcohol thing,” so I sort of decided to just punish myself and say I’ll do February as well, I’ll do two months off,’ Holland said.
Holland added that the two months had passed, and he was, ‘still really struggling, like I couldn’t be social, I felt like I couldn’t go to the pub and have a lime soda, I couldn’t go out for dinner, I was really, really struggling and I stared to really worry that I had an alcohol problem.’
After the two months had passed, he decided to go another three months until his birthday, June 1.
‘I said to myself, if I can do six months without alcohol, then I can prove to myself that I don’t have a problem,’ Holland admitted, adding, ‘by the time I had got to June 1, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life.’
He added that after all that time without alcohol, he was sleeping better, solving problems better, ‘things that would go wrong on set that would normally set me off, I could take in my stride.’
