Millie Bobby Brown on ‘Stranger Things,’ Marriage, and Life on the Farm

Millie Bobby Brown was 11 when she began playing the icon known as Eleven.

By the time she shot her final scenes as her fierce, loyal, and telekinetic character on Stranger Things this past December, she was 20, newly married, and living on a farm in Georgia. Some days she bottle-fed a baby goat in her trailer. Many days she brought her foster dogs to work, which the cast and crew lovingly welcomed. There was also a lot of Wicked—“I’m a big musical girl,” Brown says—which the show’s creators recall a little less tenderly.

“She asked us to play ‘Defying Gravity’ while she was hovering midair in a harness so she could pretend to fly like Elphaba,” says Matt Duffer, who created the show with his brother, Ross. “Not just because she loves the song, but because she knows it drives us a little crazy.” But the bosses forgave her fast. “As soon as the camera rolls—barely a second before—that silliness vanishes and she just…transforms into Eleven.”

Now that Stranger Things has wrapped—the final season will air this year—Brown is cruising at a very comfortable altitude: She has a beloved role on her résumé that isn’t likely to weigh her down or define her in the 60 or so years she has left as an actor if she goes full-on Dame Judi Dench. Yes, the show has been one of the biggest phenomenons of the streaming era. Yes, it’s the answer to the question “How did Netflix survive 2022 when nearly a million subscribers jumped ship?” And yes, Brown was the series’s first breakout star, and Eleven arguably its most indelible creation. But the actor also has a beauty and lifestyle brand called Florence by Mills; an animal rescue organization named Joey’s Friends, which she runs from the farm; a successful, well-loved Sherlockian film franchise in Netflix’s Enola Holmes; and a gripping new sci-fi movie called The Electric State, which was directed by the Russo brothers and in which she stars as a spunky grunge heroine thrown into a war between robots and the humans who created them.

In other words: She’s not likely to be pigeonholed, and she definitely won’t get bored.

“She’s authentic and tough,” says Chris Pratt. “She’s not a pleaser. She’s very capable of charm, but it’s not her only weapon.”

The combination of Brown’s youth and the rate of her ascendancy—as well as the noxious combination of vile men and the internet—have made for some rough terrain, and during our interviews she will be honest with me about how they’ve infuriated and affected her. Chris Pratt, who stars with her in The Electric State, tells me, “She’s authentic and tough. She’s not a pleaser. She’s very capable of charm, but it’s not her only weapon. She has a point of view and strength that are incredibly watchable.”

And again with the critters: “She had a different rescue animal on set every day!”

Brown’s sprawling farm lies at the end of a winding back road in rural Georgia, behind a thicket of pines. When I pull up to the property on a Tuesday afternoon, she emerges from a stable to greet me with her husband, Jake Bongiovi, an actor, producer, and a son of Jon Bon Jovi. The couple gave love a good name at a small ceremony in May of last year and had a second, bigger wedding in Tuscany in September. Today, Brown is fresh-faced, wearing a plaid button-down, jeans, and pearl earrings. She introduces me to an assortment of sheep, goats, cows, donkeys—and a slinky tuxedo cat, who sits on a fence post so he can play with the horses.

As it happens, Brown’s therapy dog, Winnie, sits in one of the house’s windows. The actor adopted her five years ago to help ease her panic attacks, but at the moment Winnie is flailing her paws at the window in a codependent frenzy and seems in need of some emotional support herself. “Winnie is a really good set dog,” Brown says. “If I’m fake crying, she doesn’t get stressed. But when she knows I’m real crying, she gets stressed. She can tell the difference.”

Brown did some real crying during the final season of Stranger Things. In part because of rain, it was a logistically taxing shoot (“We did tonight’s work last night, and last night’s work is gonna happen tonight—it’s so complicated”), but by the time she shot her penultimate scene, the gravity of the series coming to a close finally struck her. “It wasn’t hitting me this entire time—until yesterday,” Brown says. “I was on set, and I was like, ‘Well, I have one more day left.’ And I started crying. I don’t actually like to cry at work. I’m a really emotional person, but I try to stay super strong. It made me feel so uncomfortable. Jake was like, ‘It’s good, you have to get it out!’ and I just started welling up.”

Brown’s mother and father are British, but she was born in Marbella, Spain, where they had moved to be close to her dad’s parents, who’d settled there. As a very young child, she had already demonstrated a zest for show tunes. When the family returned to the UK, Brown enrolled in classes for acting, singing, and dancing. (Her father, Robert, worked in real estate at the time; her mother, Kelly, was a stay-at-home parent.) “My dream was to be Hannah Montana,” she says. “I loved Hairspray and Mamma Mia!”

When Brown was eight, the family moved again—this time to Orlando, where her parents launched a teeth-whitening business. After her acting started to gain momentum, they moved to Hollywood to support her nascent career, and she landed bit parts on NCIS, Modern Family, and Grey’s Anatomy. But the opportunities stopped knocking, and they returned to the UK. Brown’s parents urged her to make an audition tape for Stranger Things before she gave up all hope. In 2015 she landed the role of a psychokinetic child raised in a laboratory, named after the number tattooed on her wrist, and befriended by neighborhood kids.

Apart from nailing the great Goonies-inflected eccentricities core to Stranger Things’s success, Brown managed to capture the clumsy inelegance of real-life adolescence while simultaneously undergoing it. “I implemented what I was learning as a child, or what I was going through, into her,” she says. “Eleven’s identity was a huge thing that we were kind of fighting with. Is she going to dress as a girl? Or is she gonna dress in the shirts of her adoptive father, Hopper? Or is she gonna be what her friends are helping her to be? At that time in my life, I didn’t know what I wanted to look like, if I preferred more feminine looks, more masculine looks, more androgynous, more grunge. So I implemented that confusion.”

Brown quickly started diversifying her work to ensure that her career would outlast her phenomenal breakthrough. Her business endeavors often nod to her family; in a sense, they’re a reminder of how hard child stars work, not just for their futures but on behalf of the people they love. When she was 15 Brown cofounded Florence by Mills, a Gen Z–forward brand that offers skin-care products and loungewear, named after her great-grandmother, who had a similarly independent spirit, according to family lore. When she was 19 she coauthored her first novel, Nineteen Steps, inspired by stories her grandmother Ruth told her about the horrific Bethnal Green tube disaster of World War II, when 173 people were killed in the crush to seek shelter from an air raid. Even the name of Brown’s production company, PCMA, is composed of the first initials of the Brown siblings, according to birth order: Paige, Charlie, Millie, Ava.

On top of starring in the ongoing Enola Holmes franchise—Enola is the younger sister of the title to Henry Cavill’s wavy-haired Sherlock—she made 2024’s Damsel, inverting the woman-in-distress trope with a quiver full of arrows and a thirst for revenge, costarring Robin Wright and Angela Bassett. The movie was number one on Netflix in 79 countries.

So Brown is poised to have a very strong solo career once she definitively leaves the great pop band that is Stranger Things, starting with The Electric State. But she’ll be taking some scars on the journey, the result of having been famous and female so young.

On a precious day off—and to be fair, it’s not really a day off, because she’s talking to me—Brown and I catch up on a video call. She’s sitting in her kitchen. Her shoulders are tense, and her answers seem wary. Brown pushes back on several questions about growing up with her castmates, reluctant to get drawn into something she believes could be a drama spiral. “I don’t allow many people into my life, and when I do, I think it should be super moderated,” she says. “I started this really young, and I felt that the press specifically was very, very harsh on me. And so I just like to make sure that I’m advocating for myself.”

Brown has real reason for her aversion. Early on in Stranger Things’s run, faceless “fans” online began dissecting the body language between Brown and her costars when they did interviews, then inventing feuds and sexual tensions among the very young teens. When Brown’s castmate Finn Wolfhard, who plays Eleven’s best friend turned beau, Mike Wheeler, was 14, he publicly pleaded for people to leave them alone after one too many run-ins with intrusive adults in public. “If you are for real you will not harass my friends, or co-workers,” he wrote in a now deleted post from 2017.

At 13, while Brown was in the midst of a fashion shoot in Australia, a rogue paparazzo snuck onto the closed set and snapped invasive, voyeuristic shots of her, which were published the next day. Brown’s slight English accent emerges when she says of one photo, “I didn’t have nothing [on underneath]…. It wasn’t too much, but it was enough for it not to be okay. I think, just in general, there should be more laws with the media in terms of paparazzi in terms of exploitation.”

“At that time in my life, I didn’t know what I wanted to look like, if I preferred more feminine looks, more masculine looks, more androgynous, more grunge. So I implemented that confusion.”

As Brown got older, she was increasingly sexualized online and no longer felt the internet was a safe place to engage with fans. The cumulative invasions of her privacy, she says, warped her own body image in ways she still grapples with, and she removed social media from her phone at 18. “I was like, Oh my goodness, this is making me feel horrible about myself,” she says. “I deleted it because I was becoming way too obsessed with the idea of becoming someone else.”

Over the years there have also been snarky headlines about what Brown has gotten paid, though the numbers sound reasonable in the context of the industry, her own popularity, and the enormous success of her projects. Netflix reportedly was paying her approximately $250,000 an episode by the third season of Stranger Things. In 2019 the streamer reportedly gave her $10 million for her second installment of Enola Holmes, which was apparently the highest up-front salary ever for an actor under 20.

Today, Brown says she’s always felt protected by her parents and by Netflix too. She points out that contracts she signed as a child should never have been leaked but instead “should have been protected so that they’re not on the record.” She adds, “It just puts children in a really dangerous situation.” All the scrutiny has made her keen to tackle the treatment of women and kids in the entertainment business. “I think everybody’s a little bit too lax about the way that children are brought up in the industry,” she says. “I grew up with a lot of eyes on my parents, but I feel that those were the people that protected me the most.”

“I learned how to say no at a very young age,” she continues. “I think it’s a very powerful word. My mom is very knowing and wise, and she advocates for herself. My dad has always been someone who pushes me to stand up for myself and never settle for anything less than what I deserve. The trust he’s instilled in me—the love and hope he’s instilled in me—has helped me go on sets or stages and fight for myself…in hopes that I can fight for others.”

“I never wanted to be famous,” she adds. “That was never my thing. I just love acting.”

Brown considers herself an extrovert but keeps to a small circle of friends. She says that growing up in a bubble with her Stranger Things castmates limited her social development. They were schooled privately on set. They played games together between shoots. But then COVID isolated them even further, and eventually they grew into their respective acting careers. Brown and Bongiovi socialize in New York from time to time with Stranger Things star Noah Schnapp. She had been photographed in LA with two of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s children, Zahara and Shiloh Jolie. But lately Brown feels happiest communing with her fauna on the farm.

“I don’t have many friends, because of who I am,” she says. “I didn’t go to school, so I don’t have the best social skills when it comes to people my own age and friendships. I struggle with that quite a bit. I missed out on a few things. But I’m working through them.”

In a world that demands a constant churn of digital engagement from entertainers—and erodes the boundaries between the internet and reality—there is something about Brown’s pastoral life that seems aspirational. These days she barely checks her phone and largely delegates social media duties, though she’s aware of what will be posted. Brown’s familiar with the contrived “trad wife” fantasies being sold on TikTok and other platforms, but that’s not what inspired her more analog life. “I’m not doing it for the aesthetic,” she says. “I’m doing it because I love it. There are maybe some trad wives out there doing it because it seems wholesome, but it is not. If you’re not picking up horse shit or washing a cow with your bare hands, then that life is not made for you. At all.”

During my first visit to her farm, Brown gives me a tour of a cozy barn, where she houses dogs rescued from local kill shelters. The goal is that they will all be available for adoption through Joey’s Friends. One of the dogs is a chunky bulldog named Mama, whom Brown had transferred from Yogi’s House, the animal rescue actor Nicola Peltz Beckham helps run. Mama happens to have her own tiny treadmill in her pen and a small television affixed to the wall, which plays a flickering Yule log. Brown is well aware of how funny this looks to an outsider. “Mama got donations from Nicola’s fans,” she says with a laugh.

A couple of years ago Brown enrolled in online courses at Purdue University, where she studied human services because she wanted to deepen her expertise as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. After launching her animal rescue in 2022, she also began taking classes in veterinary studies. She even bought an ultrasound machine to learn how to scan animals for pregnancy.

“I’m able to treat wounds, take their pulse, moderate blood pressure, things like that. I do all their medical records myself,” she says. “Now I just have to do my externship, which is like sitting in on surgeries and things like that. Adoption campaigns [on social media] are wonderful temporarily, but you really have to get in there and do the work to make a difference.”

Brown’s pursuit of a slower life dovetails with her role in The Electric State. In the movie, she plays Michelle, an orphaned ’90s-era teen desperate to find her brilliant, long-lost brother. With help from a goofy smuggler played by Pratt, she inadvertently joins a resistance movement led by robots, who rally against the very tech overlords who created and exploited them. Before signing on for the role, Brown visited the Russo brothers on set while they made 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. “There’s not a lot of teenage girls who have the depth of acting experience that Millie has,” says Anthony Russo, who directed four Marvel movies with his brother, Joe, before taking on The Electric State. “We needed somebody who’s a supremely skilled, trained, talented actor at a young age. Millie is uniquely positioned in that place because of the vast amount of work she’s been able to do.”

The movie is set in what Russo calls a “1990s that never existed”—perhaps in part to lay down epic needle drops by Judas Priest and Danzig—and raises questions about our ability to stay connected as humans without falling back on AI and other rapidly advancing technology that would let us live our lives by proxy. “We do feel like the fantasy space is a great space to process difficult things,” says Russo. “We’re in a period of exciting possibilities, where technology can connect us to other human beings in ways that it never could before. But it’s also creating dangers, addictions, and questionable behavior between people. Schools are just getting to the place right now where they’re starting to ban cell phones.”

As a sci-fi star who has resisted the quicksand of the internet as much as she can, Brown channels some of her real-life angst and bleeding heart into her role as a dauntless young Luddite. “It just aligned with everything I was looking for,” she says.

I visit Brown a second time at the farm and find her lounging on a sofa in what she calls her she shed. It also happens to be the headquarters for Joey’s Friends, which explains why there are metal cabinets full of medical records and wooden shelves stocked with gauze, latex gloves, and antiseptics. Evermore, Brown’s favorite Taylor Swift album, plays softly in the background as a rainstorm ambiently hisses outside. Brown herself is much more at ease and forthcoming than on our video call. She tells me about seeing Swift on the Cincinnati stop on the now legendary Eras Tour. Brown’s a longtime Swiftie, and she and Bongiovi have learned the live choreography to “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” “It was amazing, it was unbelievable,” she says.

At Sabrina Carpenter’s concert in Atlanta, Brown was famously sighted on the arena video display, where the singer staged one of her “arrest” routines with her. Carpenter has since done the bit with Grammy-winning producer Jack Antonoff and his wife, The Substance star Margaret Qualley, and Saturday Night Live comedian Marcello Hernández as his SNL character Domingo. Brown confesses that she messaged Carpenter before the show with a cheeky request: “Can you arrest me?”

To which the “Espresso” singer responded: “I would love to arrest you.”

Brown still has an inkling of a dream to record an album or star in a Broadway musical but says the demands of touring and daily performances would be difficult to balance with her animal rescue work. Still, she realized her musical dreams during her second, more lavish wedding ceremony in September, where she and Bongiovi celebrated their nuptials by performing a medley of songs from Grease.

“It’s a five-, six-minute dance routine that we choreographed ourselves,” she tells me giddily. They kicked it off with “Summer Nights,” then pivoted to “You’re the One That I Want” and “We Go Together.” There were even costume changes. “We started with leather jackets and glasses, then took them off,” she says. “I was in my Sandy jumpsuit, and he was in this cool T-shirt, pants, and really shiny shoes.”

Matthew Modine, who plays Dr. Martin “Papa” Brenner on Stranger Things, officiated the wedding. “It was absolutely sublime,” he says. “I was surprised how emotional I became during the vows. I’d been witness to so much of Millie’s private life and her professional career—and I’d seen her grow from that adorable child into a beautiful and thoughtful adult. I was with her when she first met young Jake. And now she’s beginning a whole new life with such a kind man.”

Bongiovi is an actor too. Last year he appeared in the comedy Rockbottom and the teen rom-com Sweethearts, in which he parodied hair rockers of his dad’s generation. Despite growing up a superstar’s son in New York City and New Jersey, Bongiovi has eased into life on the farm and is often at Brown’s side as they tend to the animals.

“He is the first man I’ve ever loved and been in love with. If we’re not fully invested, then what’s the point?”

Brown and Bongiovi were young when they got married—20 and 22, respectively—but Brown speaks with a clarity that feels rare in this age of gamified dating and the illusion of infinite options online. “We were pretty united going into it,” she says of Bongiovi, whom she met through mutual friends. “We talked about our political views, what kind of family we want to build, the kind of home we want to live in, the kind of relationship we’re looking for, the kind of careers we want. It’s such an important decision, and we wanted to make sure we were making the right one. I knew I was. It always felt right with him.”

Both sets of parents served as positive examples. The Browns married in their early 20s, and the Bongiovis were high school sweethearts who married on a whim in Vegas when they were both in their 20s. The Bongiovis’ New Jersey wit gels well with her British family, she says, and they enjoy riotous laughter at dinners all together.

Asked what lessons she’s learned from marriage, Brown sinks into the plush corner of her sofa in the she shed and thinks for a moment. “Loving someone and being in love are two different things,” she says. “I think I loved a lot of people I was with, like I loved my friends. But he is the first man I’ve ever loved and been in love with. If we’re not fully invested, then what’s the point? We have to be, and we always have been.”

Brown tells me that she and Bongiovi hope to develop films that amplify the stories that are not represented in Hollywood. “Jake’s passion is creating stories that ultimately empower people,” she says. “He shares such a similar goal to me in that. I want others to be able to watch my projects and feel empowered and feel like someone is rooting for them.”

At the moment Brown is cooking up the third installment of her Enola Holmes series and will continue to grow her animal rescue operation. Her idyllic life in the countryside is clearly bustling. “You think animals are peaceful,” she says. “You think the South is peaceful. You think this place is peaceful. But there’s so much chaos. My animals are loud, and it’s messy and my dogs are crazy. And there is, you know, laughter and a lot of passion and excitement, and it is a very vibrant place. There is so much chaos, and that is where I thrive.”

Hair by Ward Stegerhoek. Makeup by James Kaliardos. Manicure by Honey. Tailor, Yasmine Oezelli. Set design by Stefan Beckman. Produced on location by PRODn. Postproduction by Studio RM. For details, go to VF.com/credits.