Jamie Campbell Bower, the actor who survived Vecna in ‘Stranger Things’ — and himself

He played the wizard Gellert Grindelwald in the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010) and in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018); he also portrayed Caius Vulturi in the Twilight saga (2009) and Jace Wayland in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013). But the role that has truly catapulted actor — as well as singer and model — Jamie Campbell Bower, 37, to wider recognition is that of the antagonist in the popular Netflix series Stranger Things. Since 2022, while under heavy makeup required for each character to date (Vecna, Henry Creel, 001, or Peter Ballard), Campbell Bower has earned a reputation as a talent to watch for future roles, including a yet-to-be-confirmed character in the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

However, before becoming the actor he is today, he went through a personal journey full of obstacles: addiction to alcohol and other substances that led to a mental health condition, for which he received treatment in hospital. In July 2022, he wrote a thread on X — though he deleted the first part — in which he stated that he had been “seven-and-a-half years clean and sober,” after being in the grip of addiction five years earlier. “I will say this: without my journey of recovery, I wouldn’t be sat here today talking to you,” he confessed in November 2025 in Rolling Stone. “I wouldn’t be doing the job that I do now, and I wouldn’t have been able to do some incredible things that I’ve done.”

In the same interview, he also acknowledged that he has spoken openly about his recovery process, although it is a side of his life he prefers to keep private — a perspective he maintained three years later in an interview with Alternative Press: “Often when I was drinking and using, it was this idea that I’m in charge,” he explained. “My life since getting sober is so much greater than it ever would be. I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you about any of this at all. I would not be in Stranger Things. None of this would be happening."

In this series, to portray the monster Vecna, Bower had to endure long hours in makeup, he explained in an interview with EL PAÍS. He described his character’s finale as “super emotional,” although he is unsure whether he has finished portraying Vecna. During the lengthy process of becoming the creature, Bower would start by listening to more folk and black metal music, which gradually became harder and faster: “By the time I went on set, it was almost like being in the state of a boxer getting ready to fight,” he told Rolling Stone.

It was also a role that changed him not only professionally but personally: “I have a different view and a different understanding of myself having done that. Before filming, I’d suffer,” he told Alternative Press. “But I have a very different view of self and of being able to control myself.”

The son of two people connected to the music world — his mother a music manager, his father an employee of the Gibson Guitar Corporation — Bower began his professional career at the age of nine, with a role on a Kenny Loggins Christmas album, thanks to his mother. However, the British actor’s true passion for acting was born in a local youth theater in Hampshire, where small roles, he told Rolling Stone, gave him the confidence to become the person he is today. From there, at age 12, he joined the National Youth Music Theatre.

His education was focused on the arts through Bedales, a boarding school attended by Daniel Day-Lewis and Cara Delevingne. “My parents lived really close, but I asked if I could board [there] because I wanted to be in that creative environment all the time,” he recalled in Rolling Stone. “I know I’m wildly fortunate that the school I went to was heavily catered towards that [kind of expression].”

His leap to the big screen came with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2008), where he played the supporting role of Anthony Hope. In 2009, he joined the cast of the young adult fantasy film The Twilight Saga: New Moon as the villain Caius Volturi, and in 2011 and 2012, he appeared in both parts of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. However, he has not forgotten the theater: “It just so happened that Sweeney Todd came along right when I was at the end of my school career. I felt that if I took my foot off the gas and spent three years going to drama school, I’d lose the bit of the momentum that I was getting at that moment,” he told Esquire in 2024.

He also mentioned that if he were offered a show on Broadway, he would jump at the chance: “It is something that I would love to do, whether it be Shakespeare or something more modern. I would kill to do it. I love Broadway. I love coming to Broadway,” he told People in 2025, after playing Henry Creel in the stage adaptation Stranger Things: The First Shadow.

Regarding his personal life, it was in 2009, during the filming of the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that he met his first publicly known partner, actress Bonnie Wright, who played Ginny Weasley on screen. They even got engaged in 2011, though their relationship did not last long, and they parted on friendly terms in 2012.

A year after that breakup, he starred in another film based on a young adult fantasy book, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, in which he played the protagonist, Jace Wayland. The film also starred actress Lily Collins, daughter of musician Phil Collins, with whom he had an on-and-off relationship from 2012 to 2018, including a break from 2013 to 2017 when he was involved with model Matilda Lowther. Currently, it is influencer Elena Taber, whom he met in 2024, who holds his heart.

Bower also has a musical side. He was briefly the drummer for the band William K and later fronted the London punk band Counterfeit from 2015 to 2020. Since then, he has released some singles under the name Jamie Bower, including I Am and The Witch of Bodmin Moor. “The musical journey that I’m on at the moment, I’m sort of treading water in the space of both this Nick Cave piano, ballad-y kind of world blending in some more electronic elements and weird black metal kind of sensitivities, as well as this blues, dark gospel sort of thing. It fascinates me. I’m really into taking the idea of something that’s super religious and making it very dark,” he said in 2022 in Euphoria.

He has also had a presence in the fashion world: early in his career, he worked part-time as a model with Select Model Management and has walked for brands including Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Hugo Boss, Fendi, Tom Ford, Cartier, and Ann Demeulemeester.

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