David Harbour says his 80-pound 'Stranger Things' weight loss 'felt like a rebirth'

• David Harbour said that the weight he lost for "Stranger Things" season four felt like a "rebirth."
• His character, Hopper, loses weight before season four while in a Russian prison camp.

David Harbour said that his 80-pound weight loss for season four of "Stranger Things" was "like a rebirth," but he still loves his "big body" as much as his "lean athletic" one.

The actor, who plays Hopper in the Netflix series, previously told GQ that he lost 80 pounds — about a third of his body weight — prior to the show's fourth season. In season four, Hopper is held captive in a Russian prison camp, meaning that Harbour lost weight to match his character's leaner look.

Harbour recently told People that the weight loss had an impact on his life outside of the show, saying that he noticed that he was able to do things that he previously thought his body had aged out of.

"It opened up a whole new world, [I'm] a lot more pliable and a lot more teachable in my mid 40s, than I ever imagined it could be," he told People. "It felt like a rebirth. It was really refreshing and really exciting to feel like after months of training like, Oh now I can just sprint across the street if a car comes. Just simple little things like that that were really exciting for me."

Harbour said in an Instagram post in July that losing weight for the series took eight months, and that he worked with a personal trainer to "make the transformation, and then another year to keep it through the pandemic." The actor told GQ that the transformation wasn't likely something that he would "ever" do again, and that he had gained the weight back for the film "Violent Night," a Santa Claus-themed action movie.

"I love my big body as much as I love my lean athletic body," Harbour told People. "Something about being an actor is you are allowed to live in different skin and I like being a chameleon in that way."