Inside Millie Bobby Brown’s incredible life at 18 – from romance with rock legend’s son to £7m movie empire
SHE shot to fame with a shaved head – and now Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown has marked her milestone birthday with a striking new look.
Wearing a vintage corset and sporting a long platinum wig, the British star and her boyfriend channelled Barbie and Ken to celebrate her 18th.
She and Jake Bongiovi, the 19-year-old son of rocker Jon Bon Jovi, headed to London’s Cirque Le Soir nightclub with about 15 friends, before moving on to the Windmill Club.
Earlier, Millie posted a picture of the pair to Instagram, captioning it: “Hey Ken!” Jake posted the same snap and wrote: “Happy birthday barbie,” followed by “ily” — I love you — and a heart symbol.
It’s just six years since Millie came to worldwide fame at just 11 years old, playing telekinetic child Eleven in the hit Netflix sci-fi drama.
In that short time she has been nominated for two Primetime Emmys, named in Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people in the world and become the youngest ever UN Goodwill Ambassador.
Oh, and she has a successful range of beauty products too.
As she herself once said: “Once I find something I want to do, nobody’s stopping me” — a reference to her decision, at eight years old, to be an actor. She added: “It was like a bug.”
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Millie was born in Spain to English parents Kelly and Robert, with only partial hearing in one ear, which she gradually lost completely.
When she was four, the family moved to Bournemouth, Dorset, then Florida four years later, where Millie enrolled in stage school.
When a Hollywood agent scouted her, the family moved to Los Angeles so she could pursue her dreams.
But Millie, who has two sisters, Paige and Ava, and a brother, Charlie, said: “It was very hard. “There were lots of tears along the way.”
She was just nine when she secured one of her first roles, as Alice in 2013 TV fantasy drama Once Upon A Time In Wonderland.
She then landed parts in American TV series NCIS, Modern Family and Grey’s Anatomy, but the big break was always just out of reach.
In 2015, nearly broke, the Browns headed back to the UK, where they stayed with an aunt. Millie recalled: “I thought I was done.”
The audition for Stranger Things came on the day a casting agent reduced her to tears by saying she was too mature — which then came in handy when she was asked to cry to try out for the part of Eleven.
'IT DIDN'T HAPPEN ALL OF A SUDDEN'
She said: “I had to cry in the audition. My emotions were so raw, I hit it out of the park.”
Of her “overnight” success, Millie said: “It didn’t happen all of a sudden as it might seem.
"The series was really a stroke of luck, which arrived after two years of tireless work — commercials, auditions on auditions.”
Stranger Things, which also starred Winona Ryder, was a runaway hit, notching up an astonishing 8.2 million views in the first fortnight after its release in 2016.
The fourth series will be released in May, and the creators have announced the fifth will be its last.
For Millie, though — already said to be worth £7million — the drama looks like being the stepping stone to a stellar career.
She has appeared in two Godzilla movies, King Of The Monsters and Godzilla vs Kong, as well as playing Sherlock Holmes’s younger sister in 2020 film Enola Holmes, in which she is also credited as a producer.
Millie has another three movies in the pipeline — Damsel, The Girls I’ve Been and The Thing About Jellyfish — as well as the Holmes sequel, while also juggling her cosmetics company, Florence by Mills.
Popular culture expert Nick Ede thinks there is a lot more to come from the young star.
He said: “She already boasts 47 million Instagram followers and a highly successful beauty line, and I can see her really starting to cash in on her fame in a way that engages fans and encapsulates her personality.
“She’s fashion forward and knows her designers and I’m sure she could launch her own collection soon, with endorsement deals and advertising campaigns for major brands.
“I can see her success leapfrogging previous child stars like Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe.”
In an interview with Glamour magazine to mark her 18th birthday, Millie — whose hair is actually still brunette and currently cut into a “flapper bob” — said her biggest inspiration is her grandma.
'IT CREATED A LOT OF ANXIETY'
She said: “Something my nan preached was that failure is part of the process. It was something I didn’t really listen to for a long time and then I understood it after I went through my own failures.
“Not so much through my career, but mostly just being a girl and understanding you can’t be good at everything.”
While it might look from the outside that Millie — fashion icon, Gen Z role model — is good at everything she turns her hand to, growing up in the public eye has not been a smooth road.
She once revealed that bullies had forced her to move primary schools while living in the UK.
Speaking in 2019, the year after she was named a UN Goodwill Ambassador, Millie said: “It created a lot of anxiety and issues that I still deal with today.
"I have dealt with situations both in real life and online that are soul-breaking and it genuinely hurts, reading some of the things people have said.”
In 2018 she left Twitter after trolls photo-shopped her into homo-phobic memes.
When she turned 16 in 2020, she revealed she had been “sexualised” and “insulted” as a child star.
She said: “There are moments I get frustrated from the inaccuracy, inappropriate comments, sexualisation and unnecessary insults that ultimately have resulted in pain and insecurity for me.”
And last July, The Sun reported that American TikTok star Hunter Ecimovic had claimed during an Instagram Live that he “groomed” the actress when he was 20 and she was just 16 and that he lived in her house for eight months.
Millie responded by calling his remarks “offensive and hateful,” and said she was taking action against him.
Before coupling up with Jake, Millie dated American YouTube star and musician Jacob Sartorius for seven months in 2018.
'BRUTAL HONESTY'
When they split that July, she posted on Instagram: “The decision with Jacob and I was completely mutual. We are both happy and remain friends.”
In January 2019 it was rumoured they were back together, but a couple of months later, The Sun revealed she was dating Romeo Beckham — and that Posh was delighted.
A source told us at the time: “It’s early days but they make a very sweet couple. Posh has given it the seal of approval as she is a big fan of Millie’s.”
However last summer Millie was spotted in New York holding hands with Jake — who is the spitting image of his singer dad — as he carried her dog Winnie in a tote bag.
They went Instagram official in November, with a cute snap of them cuddling up on the London Eye, while she was in the capital filming Enola Holmes 2. It has been “liked” by 6.6million people, including Friends star Jennifer Aniston.
On Christmas Day, Millie posted a sweet picture of the pair in front of a decorated tree.
Jake has grown up in New Jersey, and is thought to be studying at New York’s Syracuse University.
Every day, Millie — who counts Arianna Grande and Harry Styles among her famous friends — recites the mantra “I love you. I’m sorry. Thank you”, which she says helps her to let go of “negative blocking in your aura”.
But if that makes it sound as if she has become fully Americanised,
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Millie insists she is still proud of her English traits, such as her sense of humour and “brutal honesty”.
She said: “I’ve never lost my banter, which most of my friends here and in America have enjoyed.”
