Our current Peter Parker might be prone to dropping the odd Avengers spoiler here and there, but when it comes to his personal life, he'd really rather keep that private. And given his recent experience with the media getting a glimpse of his love life—and subsequently splashing it all over the internet and beyond—it's pretty hard to blame him. Speaking to GQ, Tom Holland explained, "I'm a very private person. If you do a Google search, I'm not a tabloid person. I don't like living in the spotlight."
For some context: Back in July, Tom was spotted at the British Summer Time festival in Hyde Park, London, with a woman most assumed was his girlfriend. From there, the "mystery blonde" headlines proliferated, and the woman was quickly named and her personal details spread (since Tom's made it clear how he felt about that, and there's no way of asking for her opinion, I'm not going to name her here.)
As fans have been longing for a Tom-Zendaya relationship since they first appeared on screen together, things turned unpleasant very quickly for Tom when the Hyde Park photos appeared to shatter that dream. "It just was a bit of a shock to the system. It's the first time I've ever kind of been in the tabloids. It's the first time something like this has ever really happened to me," he told GQ. "So it's a bit of a shock to the system. Um, but you know, but it's something that you look at and you go, 'Oh, well, I just don't put myself in that situation again.'"
"I was just, Whoa, what is going on here? And it was just a little stressful. You know, it was a wake-up of, like: This is what your life is now. So just be wary," Tom continued.
Still, it sounds like he's got a good network of people around him to lean on when the tabloids drag his personal life into the spotlight. "I've been so lucky that I've had friends like Zendaya," he said, "friends like RDJ, friends like Hemsworth. Now a friend like Jake Gyllenhaal, where I can really kind of confide in them, 'cause they've been through it before." Won't lie, the thought of that group chat is filling me with envy.
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