David Harbour Lost 80 Pounds For Stranger Things Season 4 And Reveals How He Did It

Actor David Harbour has revealed that he lost a whopping 80 pounds for Stranger Things Season 4, and this type of dramatic weight loss is not something he is eager to repeat anytime soon.

In Season 4, Harbour's character, Hopper, is in prison at a Soviet gulag. He is not eating much, and to make it look believable, Harbour lost a good amount of weight.

"I lost about 80 pounds from season three--I was about 270 [then], and when we shot [season four] I was around 190," Harbour told British GQ.

How'd he do it? Intermittent fasting and Pilates, he said, noting that he cut the weight over the period of about eight months.

The process sounds intense, and Harbour isn't keen to do it again. In fact, he already put all the weight back on for the movie Violent Night, in which he plays Santa Claus.

"I don’t think I'll ever do that again," he says of losing so much weight for a project. "I have this Santa Claus movie coming out for Universal in December, and I gained [it all back]. But now, yeah, never again. The prosthetics are too good."

In the same interview, Harbour spoke about another filmmaking technique he's not interested in pursuing: method acting. He said when he was younger, he was more enthusiastic about the method acting process, going as far to think about murdering a cat to know what it's like to kill something for a role. He didn't do it, and he doesn't believe it would have been a good idea in any event.

"Not only is that stuff silly, it's dangerous, and it actually doesn't produce good work," Harbour said. He went on to say that Daniel Day-Lewis, known for his method acting, is an "extraordinary actor" that Harbour is "captivated and fascinated by." However, "When he explains his process it sounds like nonsense to me," Harbour said.

For more, check out GameSpot's Stranger Things Season 4 review.