David Harbour, who plays Hawkins’ chief of police, Jim Hopper, on the Netflix science-fiction horror series, Stranger Things, has revealed that the role has changed his perspective on family life. In the highly televised series, Harbour’s role as the chief of police finds him investigating the strange and supernatural events that occur. As such, his character becomes tightly intertwined with that of Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven, a young girl with unexplained ans exceptional powers.
Over time, Hopper adopts Eleven as his daughter, filling the hole from his actual daughter’s death that preluded the series. Throughout Stranger Things season 3, Harbour’s character transforms into the protective father-figure he used to be. Stranger Things season 4 will presumably continue this trend, but even more, it first needs to reunite Hopper and Eleven. For Harbour, his character’s arc has influenced him in real life, too, and has made him rethink having no children.
Opening up on the That Scene with Dan Patrick podcast, Harbour reflected on how playing Jim Hopper has changed the way he views his own family, and his relationship with fiancé Lily Allen’s two daughters from her previous marriage. He claimed that despite his love of freedom and independence, he felt unfulfilled without a family, and as his character on screen was becoming a father-figure for Eleven, he felt his subconscious was trying to mimic that in real life, too. He continues to comment that this connection is what has most likely made Hopper’s relationship with Eleven so impactful for audiences.
“I’m very much a New York sort of city rat. I liked my freedom, my independence. And then it was really this part that did change a lot of that perspective. The show sort of opened my heart in a lot of different ways, and one of the ways that it did was it started to make me realize how thin my existence was without a family.”
Through his acting, Harbour has become more attuned to his own wishes and desires outside of his career. Fully committing to a role such as Jim Hopper, it would be hard not to absorb at least some of that character’s personality and thoughts, as actors are so invested in their portrayals. And perhaps Hopper’s life drew one too many similarities to Harbour’s own reality, as Hopper adopted Eleven as his own daughter, and Harbour is navigating step-fatherhood with Allen’s daughters. The same way that Hopper isn’t Eleven’s biological father, neither is Harbour the biological father to Allen’s daughters, who both unintentionally encouraged him to propose after they struggled to label him as a figure in their lives.
Actors who get so invested in their roles that they struggle to separate reality from their fictional counterparts are examples of some of the best method actors in the world. Robert De Niro, for example, worked as a cab driver to prepare for his role in Taxi Driver, and Jared Leto reportedly acted as deviously as his Joker role would toward his co-stars, both on and off set, to generate the natural fear of his character. Though Harbour isn’t claiming to be method acting, there are similarities in his feelings and how the Stanislavsky method makes actors feel, due to the deep connection seeded between the two egos. Spending so much time in Hopper’s head has reminded Harbour of the potential father-like qualities he may be lacking in his own life that he’d want to implement, particularly as his on-screen relationship with Eleven is so well received in Stranger Things.
Source: That Scene with Dan Patrick
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