Jamie Campbell Bower names his two favourite movies: “I was completely blown away”
Sometimes success is not overnight, even for actors with an immense amount of talent, so while Jamie Campbell Bower clearly has an ability to transform himself both physically and emotionally onscreen, most notably as Veneca from Stranger Things, he wasn’t offered many opportunities to showcase his skills early on in his career.
After his starring role in the young adult adaptation The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was deemed a flop, and he failed to make a significant impression in either of the Twilight or Fantastic Beasts franchises, Bower admitted to feeling like his career was over.
Thankfully, he managed to find the right role that would unlock his talents when he was cast as Henry Creel, also known as Vecna, in a show that quickly became one of the true ‘event series’ of its time. While the way that the streaming ecosystem works right now makes it hard for shows to be truly monocultural events in the way that Game of Thrones or Friends did in previous generations, Stranger Things was a true phenomenon that attracted an intense amount of interest, speculation, criticism, and praise for its blockbuster series finale, which even played in some movie theatres.
Given that Bower’s other credits include fantasy projects like Witch Board, the Harry Potter series, and the upcoming new season of Amazon’s controversial prequel show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it might be easy to assume that he’s most interested in supernatural adventure stories, but in an interview with Digital Spy, he revealed that his favorite film of all-time is The Great Escape, which was inspired by his father’s love of World War II action classics.
Bower is certainly not the only fan out there, as John Sturges’ epic war film is one of Hollywood’s most beloved films, with Steve McQueen, known as the ‘King of Cool’, turning in one of the best performances ever as Captain Virgil Hilts, an American prisoner-of-war who helps lead the other Allied captives to stage an escape.
The Great Escape is a film that may have been passed down to Bower, but he has also kept an eye out for more recent projects that speak to his own generation, which is why he’s admitted to being obsessed with Take Shelter, the psychological drama from Jeff Nichols that starred Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain.
“I watch Take Shelter pretty much once a month at the moment,” Bower said, “I went to go and see that in the cinema by myself, and I was completely blown away by it. It was done beautifully, because given some elements of the story, they could have gone very heavy with the CGI, but it’s done in such a classy way.”
Acting in a scene that includes extensive CGI is certainly not an easy task, and it’s one that Bower knows about firsthand, given the extensive budget of the last season of Stranger Things.
However, it seems like he might have learned a few things from Shannon’s role in Take Shelter, as, for all of the criticism that Stranger Things 5 received, his performance was always singled out as a highlight.
