Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery has addressed his decision to retreat from the spotlight following his breakout role as the series’ antagonist, Billy Hargrove.
The 30-year-old Australian actor shot to fame for his portrayal of Billy, the abusive older stepbrother of Sadie Sink’s Max Mayfield, in Netflix’s hit sci-fi thriller. Introduced in season two, he appeared throughout season three before his character’s death in the finale, later returning briefly in season four through flashbacks and visions.
Since leaving the show in 2019, Montgomery has only starred in a few other projects, including Baz Luhrmann’s Oscar-nominated Elvis Presley biopic, Elvis, and Dan Kay’s new psychological thriller, Spider & Jessie.
Explaining his noticeable absence from Hollywood in a new interview with The Australian, he said: “I think things have changed.
“Traditional Hollywood stars existed because there was mystery,” he noted. “Social media has done away with that. That’s a large part of why I dropped off the map for the last five years.”
Montgomery added: “I’m not trying to compete with anyone else, I’m living my truth — and hopefully being able to pay the rent while I’m doing it.”
Back in 2019, Montgomery spoke to The Independent about how he intended to take advantage of the exposure Stranger Things had given him, saying he was going to be “really particular about what’s next.”
Revealing he had only done three auditions in the last two years, he said his next project was a romantic comedy called Broken Heart Gallery.
“I’m doing it for two reasons,” he said, “One, comedy is a very different heartbeat to drama. It scares me, and I also feel like it’s a good ego-stripping exercise — I can’t take myself too seriously. I think that’s an important next step.”
He continued: “On the flip side of that, I’ve been doing a podcast for over two years. It’s kind of an amalgamation of beat poetry that I’ve been writing for a long time, and I collated into six distinct tracks. Eight months ago, I started approaching musicians around the world to help me compose scores that I could narrate my beat poetry too. We wrapped production about four days ago. That’s been a very cathartic experience.”
Stranger Things, created by the brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, has made stars of its young ensemble, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin, and Noah Schnapp, who star as a group of school friends living in 1980s Indiana, where strange supernatural forces begin to interfere.
The Emmy-winning series is expected to release its highly anticipated fifth and final season in three parts. Volume one, which will be comprised of four episodes, will be released November 26. Volume two, containing the next three episodes, will be released on Christmas Day. Then the finale, titled “The Rightside Up,” will premiere New Year’s Eve.
