Jamie Campbell Bower: From Harry Potter and Twilight to Vecna and Celeborn

March 1, 2023 Updated October 14, 2026 6 min read

The story

Some actors spend a career trying to get cast as the villain. Jamie Campbell Bower got there early and then kept collecting them: a teenage dark wizard, a vampire with a throne, and finally the thing at the bottom of the Upside Down. Now, at 37, he is about to play an elf who is famous mostly for being married to Galadriel, which is the most wholesome job he has had in fifteen years. I have followed his career long enough to find that very funny, and also slightly overdue.

Jamie Campbell Bower

Harry Potter: two minutes that lasted a decade

James Metcalfe Campbell Bower was born in London on November 22, 1988. His first film was not Harry Potter, as the old fan sites like to say, but Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd in 2007, where he played the young sailor Anthony Hope and sang. Three years later he appeared as the young Gellert Grindelwald in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1, a role measured in seconds rather than scenes.

Those seconds turned out to be valuable. In 2018 the franchise called him back to play young Grindelwald again in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. My read: very few actors get rehired for a flashback. It says the casting people remembered the face, which in Hollywood is a better review than most reviews.

Jamie Campbell Bower as young Gellert Grindelwald

Twilight: Caius and the art of the stare

In the Twilight films he played Caius, the most openly hostile of the Volturi. He first showed up in New Moon (2009) and came back for Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011) and Part 2 (2012). It was not a talking part so much as a glaring part, and he committed to the glare. In between came King Arthur in Starz’s Camelot (2011) and Jace in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013), the leading-man years that never quite turned into a franchise.

Jamie Campbell Bower as Caius in Twilight

Stranger Things: the orderly who turned out to be Vecna

The role that changed everything arrived in season 4 of Stranger Things in 2022. He was introduced as Peter Ballard, the friendly orderly at Hawkins Lab, and the show then revealed that Peter was Henry Creel, also known as One, also known as Vecna. (The old version of this page put him in season 3. He was not there. We checked, and so did Hawkins.)

He returned for the fifth and final season, which premiered on Netflix in November 2025. At the ZYN Rolling Stone UK Awards on November 20, 2025, he took home The Television Award for Vecna. He also made a one-night Broadway cameo as Henry Creel in Stranger Things: The First Shadow in 2025, and in 2026 Henry Creel became a playable character in the game Dead by Daylight. Here is my opinion: Vecna works because Bower plays Henry first and the monster second. The prosthetics are frightening; the politeness is worse.

Vecna, as shown on The Tonight Show. Photo: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (still)

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The music: from Counterfeit to BloodMagic

Music was never a side project for him. He sang in The Darling Buds, which split in 2015 without an album, then fronted the punk band Counterfeit, which released its first album in March 2017 and announced its split in November 2020. Solo singles followed under the name Jamie Bower, including “Crow” and “I Am” in 2022. On April 1, 2024 he announced BloodMagic, a heavier post-hardcore project, with the debut single “Death / Rebirth”. In March 2026 he released a video for “Waiting for Your Love”.

I will be honest: I came for Vecna and stayed for the guitars. The through line is that he keeps choosing the louder, less commercial option, which is not what a man with a Netflix villain on his résumé is supposed to do.

Bower on The Tonight Show, talking Stranger Things and the band. Photo: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (still)

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Sobriety, said out loud

In July 2022 he posted: “I am now 7 1/2 years clean and sober.” He has talked about growing up with anxiety, using alcohol to quiet it, and spending time in hospital for his mental health. His message to readers in the same post was simple: “For anyone who wakes up thinking ‘Oh God not again’, I promise you there’s a way.” Recovery organizations publicly praised him for it. My take is that this is the bravest thing on the list, and it did not need a costume.

In Alexander McQueen, September 2026, from his Instagram. Photo: Instagram / @bowerjamie

Love life: setting the record straight

The earlier version of this article claimed he had been with Lily Collins since 2018. That was backwards. He was engaged to Harry Potter actress Bonnie Wright (engaged in 2011, split in 2012), then had an on-off relationship with Collins, his Mortal Instruments co-star, from 2012 to 2018. Since 2025 he has been dating New York-based content creator Elena Taber; they walked the London premiere of Stranger Things 5 together on November 13, 2025, and she was with him at the Rolling Stone UK Awards a week later. Famous couples tell you a lot by which carpets they share. These two picked the one with the monster.

What’s next: an elf, an anorak and a haunted house

In July 2026 Empire confirmed that Bower plays Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband, in season 3 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which premieres on Prime Video on November 11, 2026; he teased the role at San Diego Comic-Con. This autumn he also fronts Napapijri’s Fall/Winter 2026 campaign “Where Next?”, shot in Stockholm, Courmayeur and Tokyo, his first partnership with the brand. On the film side, he appeared in Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, Witchboard and Emmanuelle in 2024, and True Haunting is in post-production.

“Tell me, where is Gandalf?”: a Rings of Power tease from his Instagram, August 2026. Photo: Instagram / @bowerjamie

The old headline promised a rising star. That was in 2023, and it was already late. He has spent the years since proving that the villain was never the ceiling, only the thing he was best at while everyone else caught up. If Celeborn turns out to be a nice guy, I suspect he will find a way to make even that a little unsettling.

Sources

Fact check

Rumor / Reality

The rumor

Claims that he has been with Lily Collins since 2018 are false.
Claims that he won a 2010 Scream Award for New Moon are not supported by any record we found.
Any engagement rumors with Elena Taber: neither has announced one.

What we know

Bower plays Celeborn in The Rings of Power season 3 (Empire, July 2026).
He played Vecna from Stranger Things season 4 (2022), not season 3.
He dated Lily Collins on and off from 2012 to 2018; he is now with Elena Taber.
In July 2022 he wrote that he was 7 1/2 years clean and sober.
He fronts Napapijri's Fall/Winter 2026 campaign "Where Next?".

Written by

Victoria Lane Editor-in-chief

“A rumor is not a story until we know what is actually true.”