Tom Holland Reveals Marvel Found Out He Raided the Hotel Minibar Before His Robert Downey Jr. Screen Test

Tom Holland has spent much of 2026 opening up about his decision to give up alcohol, using a string of high profile interviews to talk candidly about a period of his life that used to stay private.

With ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ set to hit theaters this summer, the actor has found himself back in the press cycle, and this time the conversation keeps circling back to sobriety rather than spoilers.

That openness has become one of the more consistent threads of his recent press run, showing up everywhere from Amy Poehler’s podcast to morning television. Holland has talked about quitting drinking in January 2022 and how the habit had quietly started affecting both his personal life and his work on some of the biggest films of his career. Now, an older story from his past has resurfaced, one that ties his drinking directly to the role that made him a household name.

Holland revealed that Marvel actually found out he had been drinking the night before his very first screen test opposite Robert Downey Jr. Speaking on the Rich Roll Podcast, he recalled polishing off the minibar in his hotel room before the audition and assuming nobody would ever know about it. He said Marvel found out anyway, after the studio quietly checked with the hotel.

According to Holland, the truth came out later when the subject came up casually in conversation with the studio. He recalled being told that the team already knew, because they had simply called the hotel directly to ask. The realization caught him completely off guard, and he described the moment as an embarrassing gut check early in his career.

Robert Downey Jr., who has spoken openly for years about his own history with addiction, has reportedly been a steady source of support for Holland as he navigated sobriety. The two have remained close since ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ and Holland has credited Downey as someone who genuinely understood what he was going through rather than simply offering sympathy from a distance.

The minibar story is not new, but it keeps resurfacing because Holland continues to use it as a marker of how far he has come since those early Marvel days. On Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast this month, he reflected on just how difficult that first year without alcohol really was. He told Poehler that getting through that first year was the toughest challenge he had ever faced in his life.

Holland has said the experience eventually led him to launch Bero, his non-alcoholic beer brand, after noticing how few quality options existed for people choosing not to drink in social settings. He has even credited his fiancee Zendaya, who does not drink, as inspiration for a new alcohol free shandy the brand is rolling out this summer.

With ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ arriving in theaters at the end of July, Holland’s willingness to revisit stories like the minibar incident suggests he now sees his sobriety as part of his public story rather than something to keep hidden behind the scenes. He has said repeatedly that he does not want to preach to anyone about drinking less, only that he hopes his honesty helps someone else feel less alone with the same struggle.

For an actor who once worried about what Marvel might quietly find out about him, Holland now seems far more interested in being the one to tell the story himself.

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