"[Bias] is that thing that stops you being regarded as a person and makes you something smaller. With my accent, I've had that experience where I'm suddenly no longer a person with infinite possibilities and potential - I am 'that Scottish person'. I'm reduced to a noise that comes out of my mouth."
Paddington The Musical has dominated the WhatsOnStage Awards, winning nine prizes after its triumphant launch in the West End last year. The show, based on Michael Bond's original children's books and the recent film adaptations, was a hit with fans and received rave reviews from critics after its debut at the Savoy Theatre in November.
I'm categorically not," he said when asked in a recent The Times interview whether he is set to play Voldemort. "Can you make that the headline?" he asked, seemingly keen to make it known far and wide that he wouldn't take on the role.
He played the wizard Gellert Grindelwald in the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010) and in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018); he also portrayed Caius Vulturi in the Twilight saga (2009) and Jace Wayland in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013). But the role that has truly catapulted actor as well as singer and model Jamie Campbell Bower, 37, to wider recognition is that of the antagonist in the popular Netflix series Stranger Things.
The role, which spanned nine films, put him up among the world's highest paid actors and made him a global pin-up. Yet the confidence was, in part, a construction. The character you see in interviews, he says, easing into the chaise longue, and the presentation of myself over the last two decades working in Hollywood, it's me but it's a creation too. It's what I thought people wanted to see.
