'Stranger Things' actor David Harbour says his role helped him prepare for fatherhood

David Harbour, who is known for playing the role of Jim Hopper in Stranger Things opened up about how his role as Millie Bobby Brown's father has made him feel like a changed man. The 46-year-old actor, in Tuesday's episode of That Scene with Dan Patrick podcast on Amazon Music, shared that Hopper's affectionate act of becoming a father figure to Eleven (Millie's character) in the show is very much inspired his own journey to start a family.

Harbour, who is married to Lily Allen and is a father to two daughters Marnie Rose, 8, and Ethel Mary, 9, who Lily shares with her ex-husband Sam Cooper said, "TV definitely helped me in my life."

David Harbour on how Stranger Things changed his perspective 

Delving further on how the show made him have a change of heart, from being a 'New York sort of city rat' to making him realise a 'thin existence' without a family, Harbour said, "I'm very much a New York sort of city rat. I liked my freedom, my independence. And then it was really this part that did change a lot of that perspective," he explained.

"The show sort of opened my heart in a lot of different ways, and one of the ways that it did was it started to make me realize how thin my existence was without a family."

Harbour also added that "maturing into a father" on-screen was also something his subconscious was crying out to do. He went onto describe the show's inspiration on his life as 'unique alchemy between the performer and the role'. "I think that's partially why things are so successful because there's some unique alchemy between the performer and the role," Harbour continued. "I feel like there was something in Hopper that had a deep need for family, and there was something in me that had it too but that I wasn't even aware of. As I began to explore this role, the role allowed me to do that in my real life," he said.

Allen's daughters helped him take marriage decision 

While Jim Hopper's character led him on to realise his newfound love for family, his wife Allen's daughter made him realise that he wanted to get married to their mom. Appearing in Jimmy Kimmel Live! last month, that actor made a revelation about the daughters' role in getting him married in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Narrating the incident that made him take the plunge, he said, "We were riding around the beginning of pandemic — she has two kids, these beautiful daughters, eight and nine — and we were riding bikes..... the little one was riding along and she was going like, 'David, dad, David, dad.' Because the D got her confused," he recalled. " And the older one got very upset with that. She was like, 'He's not our dad! He's not our dad!'"

Harbour continued, "And then younger one was like, 'Well what is he? He's kind of our dad.' She's like...He's just some guy in our lives!'". At that moment, Harbour said, he knew he wanted to marry Allen. The Black Widow actor married Allen, 36, in September last year. 

(IMAGE- DKHARBOUR- INSTAGRAM)