Jamie Campbell Bower has now been fortunate enough to star not one, not two, not three, but four franchises with very loyal fanbases, and he hasn't even played the lead roles.
He joined the cast of Twilight, playing Caius Volturi, he played a young Grindelwald in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and 2, and he played Jace in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (alongside his ex-girlfriend Lily Collins). Now he's just been cast in Stranger Things, adding yet another famous franchise to his portfolio.
But while we have a ton of questions on what his character Peter Ballard will be up to in the hit Netflix show, another big question we have is: what has he been doing recently? Playing with his band, apparently.
He Has Music In His Blood But Turned To Acting
Campbell Bower doesn't just have that rocker vibe because he likes music, he has music in his blood. His mother is a music manager and his father works for the Gibson Guitar Corporation. But somehow, Campbell Bower went into acting at least at first.
Pretty much out of the gate, after doing a little modeling at the beginning of his career, Campbell Bower got a role in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, alongside Johnny Depp.
He appeared in the films RocknRolla and Winter in Wartime in 2008 and in 2009 he got the role of Caius in Twilight, where he played the evil blonde vampire until Breaking Dawn: Part 2.
Next on his agenda was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, where his only contribution to the film was jumping out of a window with the Elder wand, and the series Camelot, where he played a young King Arthur.
In 2013, he scored a role in the film adaptation of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, where he played Jace Wayland, a Shadowhunter, alongside Lily Collins. After filming the movie, Campbell Bower and Collins had an on-again, off-again relationship for about five years, but ultimately split amicably in 2018.
After starring in Mortal Instruments, Campbell Bower had already done three fantasy franchises, and Interview Magazine picked up on it.
"People ask me if it’s a career move or whatnot—it’s not," Campbell Bower said about his success in the genre. "I wanted to be a part of Harry Potter. I wanted to be a part of the first Twilight movie and unfortunately, it didn’t work out so great. So when they came back and were like, 'Do you want to come in for a part for the second movie,' I was like, 'Absolutely.' And then Mortal came along but we didn’t know when we were shooting the first movie that we were going to get greenlit for another movie—we have been greenlit for another movie before the first movie’s even been released, which is crazy."
During this period, Campbell Bower said he was pretty much homeless with his schedule being so full, but apparently, he likes living out of a bag.
After 'Mortal Instruments' His Acting Declined
In 2015, Campbell Bower starred in the West End musical Bend It Like Beckham, and in 2017, starred as Christopher Marlowe in the series Will, another period piece that was perfect for him.
But after that, he only had another short role as young Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (this time playing the older version of his Sweeney Todd co-star, Johnny Depp), a role in Six Days of Sistine, and shockingly voiced a character in Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends.
He hasn't had a good role since Will in 2017, which explains a lot because his band Counterfeit released its first album that same year. Campbell Bower finally lived his musical dreams when the band went on tour.
At the end of this year, though, they actually split up, mainly due to the pandemic, but Campbell has plans for his solo career, under the name Jamie Bower. His style will now be a little darker and more experimental, with tracks called "Paralysed" and "Start The Fire."
"I feel creatively in the best space that I’ve been in for a long time, if ever," Jamie told NME. "I want to be cautious here because I don’t want to be like, ‘Oh, well, I’m the lone wolf and I don’t need anyone’, but there is certainly something to be said for just going with your gut and going with intuition.
Just because Counterfeit ended doesn't mean that was the end of the road for Campbell Bower.
"I’ve always been an artist. I’ve always been the person that’s like: ‘I’m going to go with this hammer and tongs for the rest of my life. I have no real plans or desire to do anything else.’ At the end of Counterfeit, I was like, ‘Okay, well, I’m just going to crack on and do what I love and carry on doing what means the most to me.'"
One day he hopes to combine his love of music and film and make a soundtrack. But for now, he'll stick with keeping them separate. His solo career is successful and he's just been cast in season four of Stranger Things, entering into his fourth fantasy franchise.
When he was cast he had to sit on the secret for almost a year. "I’m still to this day humbled and blown away by the fact that I’ve been allowed this opportunity to be in a show that is f***ing amazing," he said.
"I still have those ‘pinch me’ moments. I’ve done some work already, and just being there is a real experience. There’s just something really magical and really special about working on that job."
Who knows, if Campbell Bower continues the way he's going, maybe he'll have the Guinness World Record for starring in more than five fantasy franchises. At this point, we wouldn't doubt it.