David Harbour as Jim Hopper in Stranger Things
David Harbour plays Hopper in Stranger Things (Picture: Netflix)

David Harbour described feeling like ‘last at bat’ when auditioning for Stranger Things.

The actor, who recently wed singer Lily Allen, had been experiencing ‘burnout’ in Hollywood and went for Stranger Things as a last ditch attempt.

Luckily he landed the role of Jim Hopper and the show turned out to be a smash hit, running for three seasons so far with a fourth on the way.

He told Cigar Aficionado: ‘It felt like a last at bat for me, and I was like if I’m going to do this I’m really going to swing for the fences and put my whole soul into this thing.’

The star described Chief Hopper as being ‘dead inside’ which required a bit of method acting.

The Revolutionary Road actor went to ‘a dark place’ which wasn’t easy to recover from.

David Harbour
David had begun to feel ‘burnout’ with Hollywood before being cast in Stranger Things (Picture: Getty)

‘I’d shoot, just go back home, I just lived in this sort of dark place. It took me like a solid week to let it go,’ he explained.

Before being cast David had ‘given up’ on the hope of making meaningful projects as an actor.

‘I had gotten to a place in Hollywood where I was playing fifth and sixth on the call sheet,’ he said.

‘It was good – I could make a living and could support a theatre career that allowed me to do more artistic kind of stuff, but I had really given up on the idea that I would be able to tell stories that I really cared about in TV or film.’

David Harbour
The actor was interviewed for Cigar Aficionado (Picture: Cigar Aficionado)

Filming on season four is underway once more after the coronavirus pandemic stopped filming in March.

Hopper was seemingly killed off at the end of season three, sacrificing himself to help close the rift between our world at the Upside-down.

But a teaser trailer shared by creators The Duffer Brothers, Hopper is now stuck in Kamchatka, Russia, sparking many fan theories about what he’s been up to.

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