Is Tom Holland Alcoholic? Zendaya's Boyfriend Opens Up About His Personal Struggles

Tom Holland has acknowledged that he had a 'problem' with alcohol, revealing in new interviews published this week in the US and UK that he secretly drank heavily while working and has now channelled his sobriety into launching a non-alcoholic beer brand.

The Spider-Man star, 28, spoke about his experiences on Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast and in an interview with GQ, describing how he would often drink alone in hotel rooms before turning up on set the following morning.

The news came after years in which Holland's image has been that of a grounded, almost unusually sensible leading man for his age. Fans have watched his relationship with Zendaya unfold, while studios have promoted him as an energetic, reliable box-office draw.

In public, there was little hint of turmoil. The picture he sketches now is more complicated and, frankly, more familiar: a young actor travelling the world, working intense hours and quietly leaning too hard on alcohol to cope.

In his GQ interview, Holland said he was not the stereotypical hard-partying celebrity holding court in nightclubs. Instead, his drinking took place in private, on the road, after work.

'I had my times, but I wasn't necessarily the nightclub-going person as much as I could sit at home in my hotel room and finish a minibar and go to work the next day,' he recalled. 'So my version of wild was very, I guess, un-Hollywood. I was always pretty sensible. I just drank too much.'

That last line lands heavier than it first appears. Many people would recognise the logic: if the work gets done, if you turn up on time, it can't be that bad. Holland now clearly disagrees.

In speaking to Poehler, he did not soften his language. He quit drinking, he said, because he 'had a problem' and 'couldn't put it down.' He added that alcohol had begun to seep into every corner of his life.

'It was affecting my professional life. It was affecting my personal life and my health,' he told Good Hang. 'So, I decided to pack it in. And I got through that first year, which I think was the toughest challenge that I've ever been on.'

Tom Holland's Alcohol Struggles Moved From Nagging Doubt To Full Alarm

Holland first opened up publicly about his relationship with alcohol in 2023 on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast. At that point, he described a creeping obsession, saying it got to the stage where 'all [he] could think about was having a drink.' He said the intensity of that focus 'really scared' him and left him feeling 'enslaved' to alcohol.

Those are unusually stark words for a bankable star in the middle of a career upswing. They also raise the obvious question his fans now ask: Was Tom Holland an alcoholic, or was this something shy of addiction?

Holland himself has not given a clinical label. He has, however, been clear that what was happening felt unsustainable and that he did not believe he could keep functioning if he carried on.

He chose a simple starting line. In January 2022, he committed to Dry January, the now-familiar challenge of a month without alcohol. One month stretched into two, then three.

Somewhere in that extension, he appears to have answered his own question about whether he could take it or leave it. He has said that period convinced him he needed to stop drinking altogether.

From the outside, that first year of sobriety coincided with some of his biggest professional moments. On the inside, he describes it as a grind. There is no romanticising in his account. No grand epiphany, just long days, social occasions navigated without a drink, and an uncomfortable awareness of how much he had come to rely on it.

Non-Alcoholic Beer And Zendaya's Role In Holland's Sobriety Shift

As Holland settled into sobriety, he became more attuned to the gaps in the drinks market for people like him. He told GQ that during that first year, trying to maintain a social life without alcohol was harder than it needed to be. The bar options were limited and often made non-drinkers feel conspicuous.

'I noticed there were limited options for people like me that were looking for something that would scratch that itch, that would help you go to the bar and be a part of the social experience but not feel like the only person with a lemonade,' he said.

Out of that frustration came Bero, his own premium non-alcoholic beer brand, which launched in 2024. Holland's move into drinks entrepreneurship is not a subtle PR gloss on his story so much as an extension of it. He is, in effect, trying to sell the thing he went looking for and could not find.

The latest twist is more personal. Holland has just unveiled a range of shandies under the Bero label, mixing 70 per cent lemonade with 30 per cent of his non-alcoholic beer. There are four flavours, all named with a sort of gentle romance: Daybreak, Golden Hour, Sunset and Midnight.

Zendaya's name inevitably comes up. Holland has said his girlfriend, who has 'never been a drinker,' did not particularly enjoy the original Bero beers.

'She's incredibly proud of Bero, it's just there is a missing link because she doesn't enjoy the stuff that I'm trying to sell,' he joked. The shandies, he explained, were designed partly so that 'Z could enjoy' something from the range.

There is an obvious commercial logic in centring Zendaya, one of the biggest stars on the planet, in the story of Bero's expansion.

It is also, in its own way, disarmingly domestic, a man who once drained hotel minibars alone now formulating a softer drink so his partner can share in the thing that helped anchor his sobriety.

He wants to be seen not only as an actor who stopped drinking, but as one who is willing to talk plainly about how hard it was to realise he needed to.