It’s no easy task to identify a Netflix boon more prominent than Stranger Things; in fact, we reckon it borders on impossible. Indeed, after the Duffer brothers first introduced Eleven, Mike, Steve, and the rest of the Hawkins gang to the world, subscribers have been eating up season after season, disjointed character arcs be damned.
And for many of its stars, Stranger Things is exactly to them what Harry Potter and Twilight are to Daniel Radcliffe and Robert Pattinson. When your role ends up becoming so lucrative and beloved, the floodgates to creative freedom in your career tend to open at the dubiously expensive cost of being chiefly remembered for that character for the rest of your life.
David Harbour, who portrays Jim Hopper in Stranger Things (as if we needed to clarify that), is one of these stars; the actor has been in the game since 1999, but once he joined that fateful fight against the denizens of the Upside Down, he quickly rocketed to such heights as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and action comedy Violent Night, in which he took up the main role of a very combat-proficient Santa Claus.
But with the end of Stranger Things in sight, Harbour is ready to move on from Hopper. In an interview with Insider, the actor opened up about his hopes of charting a path akin to George Clooney, also noting that while he’s loved his time as Hopper, he feels more than capable of shedding the label of “the guy from Stranger Things.”
I think about George Clooney leaving ‘ER.’ Now we just see him as George Clooney. But there was a time when it was, ‘The guy from “ER” is doing a movie with Nicole Kidman.’ It’s tricky because you don’t want to s— on the people that love you for this thing that you did that you also love. But at the same time, you kind of want to leave the nest. I got more in me. I got different stuff in me, and I want you guys to see that. I don’t want people yelling ‘Hopper’ on the street every five minutes the rest of my life.
It may take a while following the bow of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, but we think Harbour will ultimately find great success in at least softly leaving Hopper behind; after all, if Radcliffe and Pattinson can earn marked recognition for characters that aren’t Harry and Edward, Harbour can surely do the same.
You can catch Harbour in theaters this weekend when Gran Turismo begins its limited theatrical run on Aug. 11.