When the second season of Stranger Things created in 2017, Dacre Montgomery was 22 years old and suddenly everywhere. His electrifying performance as Billy Hargrove made him an overnight breakout, the kind of actor people were Googling before the credits rolled. And then, at the height of it all, he did something almost unheard of for a rising star: he walked away.
The Australian actor returned home to Perth. He refused every offer presented to him for almost four years. And for a while, that was the plan. He’d gotten a taste of what global attention was like – and it had shaken him in a way he didn’t immediately have language for. “It can be very revealing and can really bring about a fragility that I think I was starting to feel,” he told Yahoo. “I felt like I had to move away to protect myself.”
But there are some names capable of snapping a person out of a self-imposed hiatus, and one of them is director Gus Van Sant (Goodwill Hunt, Milk).
Montgomery, now 31, stars in Dead man’s threada darkly funny hostage thriller that marks Van Sant’s first feature film in seven years. Van Sant called the actor out of the blue after seeing the self-recording of Montgomery’s audition in Stranger Things. (Apparently, it’s legendary in the acting community.) The director wanted Montgomery to star alongside Bill Skarsgård, 35, in the film, based on a true crime set in 1977. (Read Yahoo film critic Brett Arnold’s review here.)
“Honestly, my first thought [when I got the call] was, Why did Gus think of Bill and me to play two fifty-year-olds?Montgomery laughs. (The real-life characters involved were both men in their 50s.)
Dead man’s threadin select theaters Friday and nationwide Jan. 16, looks at the kidnapping of a powerful banker, Richard “Dick” Hall (Montgomery), and the standoff that quickly captured the nation’s attention. Skarsgård portrays the desperate man behind it all – a character who, amid a growing media frenzy, became an unlikely folk hero. As media coverage intensified, the situation turned into a public spectacle, blurring the lines between despair, defiance, and justice in ways that still seem disturbing and familiar today.
For Montgomery, the project checked “so many” boxes to end his acting hiatus. “It’s obviously topical and it’s the subject of a big conversation in the social and political zeitgeist at the moment,” he explains. “Second, there was Gus Van Sant. And then, third, having a character that pushes me.”
The film lures audiences under a certain set of expectations before quietly undermining them. In this sense, Dead man’s thread It feels like a fitting re-entry point for Montgomery — a project that requires patience, curiosity, and a willingness to sit in discomfort, qualities he’d spent years rediscovering away from Hollywood.
This challenge extended beyond the performance itself. Working opposite Skarsgård, Montgomery found himself tested in unexpected ways – not just on screen, but off it too.
“I get really upset when I work,” he admits. “I’m super intense when I’m on set and I don’t socialize. I never socialize.” Skarsgård, he said, did not let him retreat so easily. “He was really good at saying, ‘Hey, come over for dinner. Let’s grab a bite.’ And I’ll be like, “No, I need to get ready and do my thing.” »
What Skarsgård understood – and insisted on – was that accessibility was part of the job. “He said, ‘Man, that’s part of it. I can’t act with it [someone] it’s not accessible,” Montgomery recalls. “It was a big learning experience for me.”
Although the work fascinates him again, Montgomery remains certain of the decision that shaped it.
“I decided to step away from the industry for a while, and it was worth it in every way for me,” he says.
His time in Perth forced him to realize how much he invested in each role and how vulnerable it left him. He went home to think: “about myself, about my process, about what I want in life.” [and] my personal life,” he says. (Montgomery got engaged in 2023.)
“So many things influence your work as an actor because my chosen vocation is where you put yourself into it,” he explains, “and that can be very intimidating. It can be very revealing.”
After Stranger Things propelling him to global visibility, he felt something change. Stepping back gave him the space to figure out what he wanted – and what he didn’t want. “I didn’t want to do anything and everything, or something for money or something for this, that or the other,” he says. “I wanted to spend time working with directors and characters that I want to invest in.”
That doesn’t mean he remembers Stranger Things with regret. (After being a regular in the second and third seasons, he appeared in two episodes in season 4.) Montgomery calls the series “an extremely formative period,” adding that he was “extremely lucky to have experienced it” — and that he can’t wait to see what its creators, the Duffer brothers, do next.
Dead man’s thread is one of several carefully chosen projects Montgomery has undertaken recently. But if there’s one thing he’s clear about moving forward, it’s this: Fame is “definitely not at all part of why I do what I do.”
He adds: “I put my all into everything I do. So choosing where to put that energy has become really important.”
This intention has already reshaped what he will build next.
“I’ve spent the last ten years working on making my first film,” he says. “We have wrapped [last month].” Editing is already underway, and for Montgomery, the experience confirmed the unique path he took.
“I really treat every job in the industry like it’s my last,” he says. “I’m happy to retire. In every job I put my all into it – and if this is the last experience I have, that’s it.”
