In The Spotlight: Millie Bobby Brown (Updated 2019)

Last week, the long awaited third season of "Stranger Things" finally released on Netflix and it shattered all records. In the first four days, the third season was up, more than 40 million US household accounts have been watching the show and more than 18 million already finished the season. At least that's what Netflix says. Makes you wonder how many people have already watched the show worldwide. I (for one) binged it within 24 hours and I absolutely loved it. All of the characters are amazing, but for me there is one that stands out over all three seasons and that is Millie Bobby Brown (she plays Eleven). The girl is just brilliant. Mind you...I think all of the actors and actresses have done an amazing job so far, but in the first season (for example) the character of Eleven does not have a lot of lines, so she has to do a lot with her facial expressions and body language and she does a fantastic job!  At this moment, Millie can also be seen in the new Godzilla movie: "Godzilla II: King of Monsters" (as Madison Russel). So let's talk some more about Hollywood's 'golden girl'.

 Millie always knew that she wanted to act, she calls it a bug. When she was 8 years old, Millie told her parents that she wanted to perform. Because of this, her parents sold everything and the family moved to Orlando, Florida (USA). In the US, Millie took acting classes as a pastime on Saturdays. In 2013 she made her acting debut in ABC's Fantasy/Drama series "Once Upon A Time In Wonderland" (which served as a spin-off for "Once Upon A Time"), playing the role of Young Alice.  In the few years following, Millie was getting roles in “NCIS” (Rachel Barnes), “Grey’s Anatomy” (Ruby), “Modern Family” (Lizzie) and “Intruders” (Madison O’Donell). She also made the shortlist for a lot of huge projects, but never got the major roles. Those were hard times for the Brown Family; they gave up everything for Millie to be able to fulfill her dreams, but they were in a very tight spot at one time. They had to loan money from Millie’s manager. But eventually money ran out; they had to admit defeat and moved back to England. At this point Millie thought her career was over before it really started and she wasn’t getting any roles in England. Then she got the callback about the audition for “Stranger Things”.

During the first audition she was very emotional, but she got a call back. What followed were multiple (taped) auditions; they were all done with “dummy sides”. You might ask: with what?? Well “dummy sides” are fake scenes to test out the actor, without revealing any important plots or story lines. During the final audition, however, she was confronted with a tricky part of her role. She talked about it in an interview. Apparently she was standing in the room with the Duffer brothers (the writers and producers of the show), when Ross Duffer approached her and made a sound; it was “BZZZZZZZZZ”. She asked him what he was doing and Ross said she had to shave her head. Brown said she was OK with it, but her Mom was not. Her mom’s first reaction was that it was not going to happen, but Millie (and her dad) told her to calm down. Millie said she thought it was fine, because she knew it would grow back. But when she was in the chair and they were cutting it off, she began to doubt her decision and they told her to have the mind frame of Charlize Theron in "Mad Max". And that pulled her through. Now she thinks it’s the best decision she ever made (she even posted the video of shaving her head on her Twitter account). 

Brown talked about the preparations for the show in multiple interviews. She said that she (and the rest of the cast) got a lot of homework. The producers wanted them to watch “Poltergeist”, “The Goonies” and “Stand by Me”. The most important movie, however, was “E.T.”. They told her to study the way E.T. interacts with the children.