‘It f***s me up,’ he said. You might think that starring in Stranger Things would come with its pressures considering it’s one of Netflix’s biggest ever shows. But for one actor, the stress reached a peak before their episodes were broadcast. Jamie Campbell Bower, whose credits include Twilight: New Moon and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I, won legions of new fans as the villainous Vecna in season four of Netflix hit Stranger Things.
![[Jamie Campbell Bower struggled with playing a villain for so long]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/02/18/10/newFile-2.jpg)
The British star has now revealed that getting into the mindset of the evil character became a point of topic with his therapist. “I turned around to him, and I was like, ‘Yeah, to be honest with you, man, I just don’t think I’ll be doing another bad guy for a minute.’ Like it f***s me up. I’m dead serious.”. Bower said his time on the show, which has now completed production for good, has “been amazing” and “an incredible journey”. He will appear in the forthcoming final season, which was in production for a whole year and is set to start in November.
![[Jamie Campbell Bower underneath a lot of make-up in ‘Stranger Things’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/02/18/10/newFile-1.jpg)
“It’s something that so many people love and something that I loved as well and still love,” he continued, adding: “But I definitely am ready to hang up the foam latex and wish him a slippery farewell.”. Bower spent up to eight hours a day applying make-up while portraying Vecna on the show. While they eventually managed to streamline the process, it apparently still took an average of seven hours to transform Bower into his monstrous form.
“I think we got it down to about six hours and 20 odd minutes,” Gower said. “That was our record. But it averaged about seven hours, I think. Something like that. “The actual application process, it was a well-orchestrated dance. It was the four of us, applying his makeup. And we would be doing this kind of dance around him. Somebody had to be at a certain place at a certain time. “It was a marathon every day, but he was incredible,” he added. “We never once had a complaint from Jamie.”.
