Occasionally, actors take on a role that gets its hooks in them and doesn't completely untether once shooting is over. It's happened to some of the best performers on the planet, and it apparently happened to Tom Holland while playing Danny Sullivan in the upcoming Apple TV+ crime miniseries "The Crowded Room."

If that title sounds familiar, it's because the project has been kicking around since the early 1990s. Based on Daniel Keyes' nonfiction book "The Minds of Billy Milligan," which details the criminal exploits of a serial rapist afflicted with dissociative identity disorder, the project was nearly James Cameron's follow-up to "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." John Cusack was originally cast in the lead, and Cameron was preparing to shoot before a series of lawsuits (some filed by Milligan himself) derailed the production.

Akiva Goldsman revived the project as a miniseries in 2021 but departed from Milligan's dark story to...