He grew up learning that safety was temporary and stability a rumor. Acting wasn’t some glittering fantasy; it was an escape hatch disguised as a craft. That $100 drama class became a legal way to bleed out everything that had nowhere else to go—rage, fear, grief. Onstage, he found rules, structure, and a strange kind of mercy. He discovered that discipline could be armor, and preparation could silence the chaos that used to own him.
By the time the Spider-Man suit showed up, he wasn’t looking to be rescued. He had already chosen sobriety at nineteen, not to impress anyone, but to break the cycle that raised him. Fame didn’t fix him; it just tested what he’d already built—boundaries, self-respect, a refusal to surrender his story. In a world that kept trying to cast him as a victim, his most radical act was terrifyingly simple: he survived on his own terms.
