Jamie Campbell Bower was set to be a breakout star in 2009. The UK actor, set to appear as a guest at Supanova Comic Con & Gaming on the Gold Coast and in Melbourne next month, had originally emerged from a musical theatre background to land a lead role in a big budget ‘00s remake of beloved ‘60s cult favourite The Prisoner.
Bower starred in the grandiose international co-production – it was funded by major British network ITV and US cable giant AMC (at the time riding high with Mad Men and Breaking Bad) – alongside a starry cast that included Sir Ian McKellen, Ruth Wilson, Hayley Atwell, and Lennie James (just before he started working on The Walking Dead).
But the show was mostly panned by critics, barely watched, and is now mostly forgotten (it did score McKellen an Emmy nomination, though).
However, during the show’s promotional campaign there were signs of the bright future ahead as a shy and reserved Bower modestly battered away questions about his then upcoming roles in the Twilight and Harry Potter franchises (the latter role he recently downplayed at Liverpool Comic Con [LCC] as “I jumped out a window very briefly.”).
Bower’s talents were obvious and from 2007 onwards he scored steady work in both film and television as well as branching out into modelling (he’s appeared in campaigns for Burberry, Hugo Boss, and Dolce & Gabana).
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He also played in bands and pursued a solo musical career (as Jamie Bower) before becoming a part of a pop culture touchstone, playing Vecna in Stranger Things.
The Theatre Years
Bower’s artistic flair was encouraged from a young age – his mother a music industry veteran and his father working in marketing for Gibson Guitars – with violin lessons and roles in productions staged by national youth theatre organisations.
In an interview with Tudum in 2025 he recalled how his first audience was his parents: “They were so supportive of me, and I was the kid who would always put on shows in our living room for our parents.”
By age 11 he was on stage at London’s Royal National Theatre performing in Honk!, a musical adaptation of The Ugly Duckling. As he told an audience of fans at the LCC last year, “I always wanted to do this.”
And despite how his musical tastes would develop later, Bower has remained a steadfast believer in musical theatre ever since childhood.
Not only would he tread the professional musical theatre boards again as a teenager – appearing in The Dreaming, a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2001 – he also got his first big screen role as part of Tim Burton’s 2007 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street. He then hit the West End in 2015 as Joe in a musical production of Bend It Like Beckham.
The Twilight Years
Ahead of returning to his musical theatre roots in Bend It Like Beckham, Bower was to have his first taste of fandom joining the Twilight movie franchise in 2009.
Following his roles in Sweeney Todd and The Prisoner, Bower landed a small part in Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla before taking on the role of Caius in the Twilight sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon. He would reprise the villainous role in the final two films of the saga, Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (he appears in post-credit sequence) and Breaking Dawn – Part 2.
Playing Caius not only prepared Bower for the even more villainous role of Vecna in Stranger Things, he told Rolling Stone UK that it also prepared him for the stan-dom that came along later with his Netflix hit.
“Something like Twilight was culturally massive,” he explained, “but because I was a smaller part, I was on the periphery and sort of able to step in and out and see it all from a really incredible vantage point.”
During this period Bower also landed acting work that found him in films headlined by the likes of Colin Farrell (London Boulevard) and Vanessa Redgrave (Anonymous), as well as winning a lead role in the short-lived Camelot TV series – Bower was King Arthur to Joseph Fiennes’ Merlin.
In 2013, Bower yet again found himself on the verge of breakout stardom as he turned up in what was meant to be the start of yet another buzzy YA franchise, The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones.
This time he was in the top tier of an ensemble cast that included Lily Collins and Robert Sheehan (who would go on to star in The Umbrella Academy).
However, the film was panned by critics and opened below expectations, the franchise was pulled from the big screen, recast and rebooted for TV as Shadowhunters. That left more time for Bower to pursue his other love.
The Music Years
Bower had always messed around in bands, the multi-instrumentalist had even drummed for William K before singing up front of The Darling Buds (not the ’80s indie band of the same name – they formed before Bower was even born).
In 2015 Bower found music industry success as lead singer and guitarist of COUNTERFEIT, a band formed with his brother Sam.
The post-hardcore quintet racked up millions of streams during their five-year existence, with Bower proving to be a charismatic and very energetic frontman. In the video for their most popular track As Yet Untitled, you can witness Bower screaming and contorting as if Vecna himself was fighting to come to the fore.
After releasing a handful of EPs and the 2017 album Together We Are Stronger, the band signed to Republic Records (current home to Pearl Jam, Stray Kids, Kid Cudi, and Taylor Swift).
Following a string of singles however, the second album never eventuated and COUNTERFEIT called it a day late in 2020.
Bower continued as a solo artist, exploring new genres and collaborating with a variety of artists including members of Welsh metal reggae outfit Skindred and US country artist Tom Yankton.
Bower spoke about his solo work to Euphoria in 2022 and described his new sound: “I’m sort of treading water in the space of both this Nick Cave piano, ballad-y kind of world blending in some more electronic elements and weird black metal kind of sensitivities, as well as this blues, dark gospel sort of thing.”
It’s working for him. I Am from 2022 has clocked up 4.9 million streams on Spotify while the video (Bower playing dual roles) has had 3.7 million views.
His cover of traditional US country song Run On (once covered by Moby and also known as God’s Gonna Cut You Down as sung by Johnny Cash, Odetta, and many others) has amassed over 10 million streams across Spotify and YouTube.
Having expressed his fear of performing solo – he revealed at LCC “Being a solo artist is very very exposing and very very vulnerable” – Bower once again announced a new band in 2024.
He debuted his “hard rock” BloodMagic project with a BDSM-themed clip for the track Death/Rebirth. Another two solo tracks have dropped since while he was busy finishing off his time on Stranger Things.
The Stranger Years
“It changed my life in a wild way,” Bower told a fan last year at LCC when asked about his time in Stranger Things. As he had previously with the Twilight and Harry Potter films, Bower came on board once the Stranger Things franchise was already an established pop culture phenomena.
Joining the Netflix blockbuster for its final two seasons, Bower’s task was made even trickier given he played a character who was essentially multiple roles – one of those being the heavily-made up, incredibly evil monster Vecna.
Not only did Vecna instantly become an icon of monster culture, the show’s fourth season became its biggest and Bower finally experienced the breakout stardom that eluded him in 2009.
Stranger Things seasons four and five now rank as the third and fourth most watched English language shows on Netflix with over 130 million views each globally.
Stranger Things' popularity also brought Bower’s artistic career full circle. The show’s runaway success led to a theatrical prequel being adapted for Broadway. And in December last year, Bower made a surprise cameo in the play’s final scene, returning the actor to his first love and allowing him to make his Broadway debut.
His work in franchise films and genre TV shows has made Bower a popular guest at fan conventions around the world. His relaxed and affable demeanour at conventions has also made him a fast fan-favourite.
And with time spent in Twilight, Camelot, The Mortal Instruments, Stranger Things, and more, there is no fear of him running out of stories when he appears at Supanova next month in the Gold Coast and Melbourne.
