Millie Bobby Brown reveals brutal aftermath of shaving her head for Stranger Things
Millie Bobby Brown has opened up about being 'bullied' after getting a buzz cut for her role in Stranger Things.
The actress shaved off her long brown hair when she was just 10-years-old in a bid to show the Duffer Brothers just how 'dedicated' she was to bringing their vision to life.
While sitting down with Jay Shetty for the Netflix debut of his On Purpose podcast, Brown spoke about how she's thankful that she has a thick skin - as she was brutally 'made fun of' for chopping off her tresses.
Brown, 22, is the first high-profile guest to join Shetty on his podcast since it launched on the streaming platform on Monday (13 July), while fans can continue to tune in via Spotify too.
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He said On Purpose is 'entering a new era, where interviews can impact culture as powerfully as movies, music, and television on the global stage' - so who better to kick things off than a big shot like Brown?
Stars such as Keke Palmer, Jake Shane, Karl-Anthony Towns, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Amen, Camila Mendes, and Lucy Hale will also be sitting down with Shetty in the coming weeks.
You can take a look at the trailer for his show here:
Brown proved to be a fitting first guest to join Shetty for the Netflix premiere of On Purpose, as she candidly delved into various areas of her life - including her career, relationships and motherhood.
She began by discussing how taking on such a demanding role in Stranger Things when she was so young shaped her as a person.
The mother-of-one, who got hitched to Jon Bon Jovi's son Jake Bongiovi in 2024, said goodbye to her legendary character Eleven at the end of last year, after almost a decade of playing her.
Brown previously opened up about how she found it 'very hard' to say goodbye to Stranger Things after her life revolved around it for such a significant amount of time.
"I went into a little bit of a slight, slight depression," she said in June this year. "It was very hard for me. I would not have expected that coming off of the show. I’m a very happy-go-lucky person.
"This character was me, and these people were in my life more than my own family. I saw these people more than going home and eating dinner with my family.
"Saying goodbye to that after 10 years was a very, very emotional thing," Brown added. "And I’m going to miss Eleven more than anything."
As Brown pointed out, she made a lot of personal sacrifices for the sake of her career in her younger years - including shaving off her hair.
Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer revealed how they managed to convince the child star to hack off her 'long brown hair' that cascaded 'down past her shoulders' while speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2016.
"Eleven was written as having hair 'buzzed almost to the scalp'," the siblings said. "Millie and her parents were understandably hesitant to chop it all off. Would it look ugly? Would it cost her other roles?
"Fortunately, Mad Max: Fury Road was about to come out, so we pulled out a magazine photograph of Charlize Theron as Furiosa and showed it to Millie. 'Charlize looks totally badass, right?'
"Millie agreed; Charlize looked badass. And that was it: She agreed to buzz it all off."
Shetty decided to get the scoop from Brown herself about this 'defining moment' of her life, which she reckons was 'pretty impactful' in hindsight.
"I remember when it was happening I thought, 'Wow, this is really me showing my dedication to my job'," the Enola Holmes 3 actress explained.
"I was 10-years-old...your hair as a girl is what defines you as being a girl and pretty and whatever. I just didn’t care about that, I wanted to do what made me happy.
"For me that was this job. And shaving my hair off, I would say, was a pretty defining moment, just as a person."
Brown said she didn't 'think that deeply' into the gravity of the decision she was making at the time, but her mother Kelly helped prepare her for the potential consequences of shaving her hair off.
"My mum was really trying to just help me understand," she went on. "No matter what people are going to say about you, what people are going to think…because she was preparing me, she’s a logistical person."
'I was made fun of for it'
"She’s like, ‘You did this because you wanted to do it and this made you happy’. That really helped me, because she prefaced it. Because it did happen, for years. A year or two after, I got bullied - in person, at a young age - for having short hair. I think had my mum not have prefaced it, that would have hit home a lot harder.
"I fully was like, 'Really, that’s what will happen?' She was like, 'I know the world'. She was so right.
"I’d been in many situations where I was made fun of for it and I just came back to what my mum and I talked about, that I did this because this made me happy and I’m getting to live out my dreams."
It appears mother's really do know best, after all.
Brown also discussed how she 'snuck out of the house' to get her iconic '011' tattoo on her left wrist when she was just 15 - and admitted she didn't get her parents permission beforehand.
However, they didn't even realise it was a permanent inking for four years, as her mum Kelly and dad Robert presumed it was the remnants of the temporary one she sported on set while starring as Eleven.
"I knew I wanted it," Brown said of why she didn't run it by her parents. "The thing is, it’s kind of ridiculous because I could have just told them and they probably would have been fine, but I was just like, I want to do it!
"Maybe a part of me knew that if Eleven was ever killed off the show, I needed something to stand with me.
"I also had to put a temporary tattoo on everyday and it was ridiculous! I was like I know I want to get this, so I might as well do it now."
Topics: Hair, Millie Bobby Brown, Stranger Things, Celebrity
Olivia Burke