David Harbour's last name isn't Hopper. He's hoping to prove that to you soon.

He's heard your shouts of, Hopper! Hey, Hopper! Yo, Hopper! as he walks the streets of New York City and London, where he spends most of his time these days.

He's not mad at you. But just like a musician with a breakthrough hit, he longs to be more than a one-hit-wonder.

His turn as fan-favorite police chief Jim Hopper on Netflix's "Stranger Things" took Harbour from a little-known character actor to a two-time Emmy nominee — and a household name. But unlike his teenage costars, his fame came later in life.

Already in the business for decades, Harbour was prepared when fame hit. In fact, entering the celebrity bubble helped introduce him to his now-wife, singer Lily Allen. However, it's time to level up again. At 48, David Harbour is thinking about his future.

In late June, I linked up with him over Zoom.

Calling from London, he was in total dad mode, watching over one of Allen's daughters (whom she had with ex-husband Sam Cooper) while the "Smile" singer is at a West End theater, performing in the play "The Pillowman." He's a little jet-lagged, he told me, and his bushy beard didn't help him look any less haggard. (The facial hair is for work: he needs it to reprise his role as Red Guardian for the upcoming Marvel series, "Thunderbolts.")

"I'm very animated now, but the minute we're done here it's... [Snoring sound]," Harbour said as he playfully slumps his large 6' 3" frame down into his chair, becoming limp as a noodle.

Harbour's schedule has been impacted by the Writer's Guild strike, which began in May. It's halted production on both "Thunderbolts," which was scheduled to start in June, and the fifth and final season of "Stranger Things." Harbour and I spoke just weeks before the actors joined the picket line after SAG-AFTRA called its own strike.

Though there's been a lot of time recently to think about roles that can stretch him as an actor, he actually began before the strikes even got started. In the past few years, he's played a Marvel character (Red Guardian in "Black Widow"), a Santa with a specific set of skills ("Violent Night"), and a ghost who doesn't speak (Netflix's "We Have a Ghost").

He admitted these projects are a solid start as he gets ready to say goodbye to "Stranger Things," but he wants to go even further. He wants moviegoers to seek him out.

"I have always been waiting for the man roles," he said when asked to explain his late-career rise. "My 20s never worked for me. For guys like me, we're always waiting to be 40, even when we're, like, 19. We're waiting for the hairline to go. Those are the guys that I admired growing up, and those are the guys I wanted to emulate."

During our conversation, I compared Harbour to another actor who hit it big after his hairline started to thin, Gene Hackman — much to the actor's delight.

Like Harbour, Hackman started his career on the stage and didn't become a movie star until he was 41 when he played a cop in the 1971 classic "The French Connection." Hackman's gritty performance as New York detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle led to an Oscar win for best actor. Hackman went on to star as everything from Lex Luthor in "Superman" movies to a B-movie director in "Get Shorty." Audiences were mesmerized by his range — they filled theaters to see him, regardless of the movie's genre.

That's what Harbour wants.

"I hate the word 'brand,' but I want there to be something you get when you see a movie I'm in," he explained. "You'll get an emotional experience. You'll get surprised." He's hoping "Gran Turismo" has both of those things.

Channeling his inner coach while making 'Gran Turismo'

Behind every underdog is the grizzled coach motivating the hero toward unlocking their full potential. That's where Harbour comes in. In the movie, he plays Jack Salter, a brash American who must train Jann (played by Archie Madekwe) into a real race-car driver.

Director Neill Blomkamp ("District 9") said he always wanted Jack, based on a composite of the real Jann's early coaches, to be American.

"I kind of read him older, like Robert Duvall in 'Days of Thunder,'" Blomkamp told me. "But quite early on, David's name came up, and as soon as I heard it, I thought that could be super interesting."

His first meeting with Harbour convinced Blomkamp that he'd found his Jack, he said, but Harbour's reference point for the character was one he didn't initially understand.

"He kept bringing up 'Hoosiers' with Gene Hackman, in how he wanted to play Jack," Blomkamp said. "I actually had never seen it, so I had to watch it in order to know what he was talking about. Then I saw instantly what he meant, and we were off."

Harbour's performance is the glue of "Gran Turismo."

Dealing out sarcastic one-liners, Harbour is immediately likable as Jack. But as the movie goes on, Harbour shows even more of his range as Jack softens toward Jann. He's a calming figure within the fast-paced racing madness Jann has been thrust into.

A lot of those choices came from Harbour himself, Blomkamp revealed. At times, the actor would throw out ideas "days before shooting," the director added. They'd later be worked into the script.

"He's very controlled," the director said of Harbour's acting. "He wouldn't just go off on a scene, and I would just let the camera roll. He's really thorough."

By his admission, Harbour's not a car guy, but that didn't mean he was going to pass up the chance to drive one during production. Unlike his costars, who all wanted to get behind the wheel of a race car, Harbour had his eye on the safety cars for a specific reason.

"Safety cars are the ones that show up when a crash happens on the track and those are stick shift. The race cars have peddle shifters," Harbour explained. "So I would wheel around in the safety cars while everyone else was fetishizing out over the racing cars. I was like, 'You are missing out.'"

In the movie, there's a serious scene where Jack and Jann talk on the race track, before driving off in a safety car. After finishing the scene, Blomkamp recalled Harbour having this look in his eye, like he wanted to stay put and drive around a bit. "I was like, 'Just go, man,'" Blomkamp said.

Harbour boasts to me that he got up to 140 miles per hour on that drive, and I imagine him looking out at the open road ahead, wondering to himself, "How the heck did I get here?"

From an unknown theater actor to life after Hopper

The first time she saw Harbour on stage was over 20 years ago when Harbour played Antonio in a production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" in New York City's Central Park. Though the play also starred the likes of Julia Stiles and Zach Braff, it was a then-unknown Harbour who Bonney couldn't keep her eyes off.

"This production had this massive wave constructed on the set and David's entrance consisted of him surfing on a piece of carpet from the top of this insanely high wave and down on stage. It looked like, at any moment, David was going to shoot off into who knows where in the park," Bonney said.

"But he rode it so beautifully," Bonney said, adding "that when he landed at the bottom, there was this ripple of delight from the audience. And then he played Antonio with such genuine heart and humor. I thought, 'Okay, this actor is impressive.'"

Interestingly enough, New York Times critic Ben Brantley was also impressed by Harbour that evening, noting in his review that Harbour was "recruited as a last-minute replacement for an injured actor" and that his performance was "the evening's most emotionally compelling."

A year later, Bonney crossed paths with Harbour again. He was auditioning for her production of the Lanford Wilson play, "Fifth of July," in which he landed the role of John, a friend to a Vietnam veteran named Ken who comes home as a double amputee.

"John needs to have this big presence," Bonney said of the role. "He's a player so he has a swagger to him, but also he goes to a very emotional place because of his relationship with Ken; it becomes very tense and very emotional as they dig back. So that's exactly what David was able to bring in."

"I've been on Netflix ... but this was a small original movie that's going to a cinema. A whole new world opened up for me with that," Harbour said of "Violent Night," in which he plays a Santa Clause who must save a family held hostage on Christmas Eve. "I like this playing field. I want to make original movies that go to the movie theaters."

After "Gran Turismo," his next original movie was meant to be the based-on-a-true-story indie film "The Trashers" in which he plays a garbage tycoon with ties to the mob, but he says he left the project over creative differences. A "Violent Night" sequel was also getting off the ground before the writers' strike. "There was a script," he told me. "Work has been done."

But if you haven't pieced it together yet, it's not just Hopper who Harbour is done with — after the strike ends and he films his last "Stranger Things" season, he's moving on from TV. Movies are his focus now. And if he has it his way, Hopper will become just a footnote in a varied, triumphant career.

"I think about that a lot," Harbour said of one day being associated with more than just the character that made him a star.

"It's a funny position I'm in, which I never thought I would be in," he said with an intensity in his eyes. I buckled up for what he was about to tell me.

"The first year of 'Stranger Things,' I remember having a discussion with a publicist and her saying, 'Maybe you don't want to be associated with the show so much,' and I was like, 'Why? I love this show. I love the character.' And I do love the show. And I do love the character," he explained. "But I don't want to be just that character. I don't want to be just that guy."

"I think about George Clooney leaving 'ER.' Now we just see him as George Clooney," he continued. "But there was a time when it was, The guy from 'ER' is doing a movie with Nicole Kidman."

"I'm trying to navigate some of that, and it's tricky because you don't want to shit on the people that love you for this thing that you did that you also love. But at the same time, you kind of want to leave the nest. I got more in me. I got different stuff in me, and I want you guys to see that. I don't want people yelling 'Hopper' on the street every five minutes the rest of my life."

I have a feeling those Yo, Hopper! shout-outs will turn into Yo, Harbour! soon enough.