The Untold Truth Of Finn Wolfhard

Finn Wolfhard grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, where there is a sizeable entertainment industry due to how many productions film there. He knew he wanted to act at a very early age, but his earliest gigs were not especially prestigious. In fact, according to various interviews he has done, he got his very first job from a posting he saw on Craigslist. "There weren't a lot of options for open casting calls other than for student films," he told August Man, a Singapore-based magazine. "So, we basically did a Google search and found this casting call for my age and gender, and the first thing that popped up was a Craigslist ad for a music video and it has worked out for the best!"

Wolfhard told Ryan Reynolds, with whom he had a conversation for Interview magazine, that once he was on set for the music video, he was hooked. The actor was nine years old when he starred in the 2012 music video for "Retro Oceans" by the indie band, Facts. The following year he starred in his second music video, depicting a zombie paperboy in the visual for "Change" by Hey Ocean. The budding star continued to appear in music videos, short films, and small guest spots until his breakout role on "Stranger Things" began in 2016.

Like so many Americans, Finn Wolfhard has struggled with anxiety. But unlike most of us, he has had to do so while navigating the public eye, with the added pressures and pitfalls of young fame. He has discussed mental health and fame in numerous interviews and seems to have a strong sense of self for someone so young. "The anxiety never goes away, but it's something that becomes way easier to deal with," he told The Washington Post in 2021. "You need a little bit of anxiety to get out of bed in the morning." He added that a combination of transcendental meditation and medication has helped him to keep his anxiety in check. 

In an interview with The Guardian, he also referenced therapy as a tool that he uses, crediting his therapist as helping him to be comfortable with inactivity and silence — particularly during the height of COVID-19 lockdown. "I've had to learn how to be bored," he said. It makes sense that an actor so aware and invested in his mental well-being also avoids some potentially anxiety-inducing coping mechanisms. The outlet reported that Wolfhard avoids vices such as tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, and instead has a voracious appetite for junk food. All of which is hopefully just one more sign that he is avoiding the stereotypical child actor downfall.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Pretty much anyone with a Netflix subscription — heck, anyone with social media — knows that Finn Wolfhard is a main character on "Stranger Things," a hot-topic show with plenty of buzz. Many also know that he has appeared in blockbuster films like both chapters of Andy Muschietti's "It" and "Ghostbusters: Afterlife." However, fewer people are aware of his voiceover work, despite it becoming a big deal for the young star throughout his career. 

In 2019, he provided the voice for Pugsley Addams in the animated "The Addams Family." According to The Hollywood Reporter, the cast –- which included stars like Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, and Snoop Dogg — did all of their work separately without ever meeting. That same year, Wolfhard began voicing a character named Player for Netflix's animated "Carmen Sandiego" television series. And he happily did so for all of its 32 episodes, telling Collider, "I love doing both animation and live acting. I'm super proud to voice Player and would love to do more animation down the road." 

It seems that he has gotten his wish. As of July 2022, the actor had three voice acting roles that he'd just wrapped on or was filming. That included Guillermo del Toro's "Pinocchio," A24's animated fantasy flick, "The Legend of Ochi," and the TV series "New-Gen" alongside punk icon, Henry Rollins. 

Though the world knows him primarily as an actor and a musician, Finn Wolfhard has always had his eye set on directing movies. In fact, he once told The Hollywood Reporter that it was the main reason he started acting, just so he could get onto sets and observe the process. Speaking to fellow Vancouver-raised actor Ryan Reynolds for Interview magazine, he divulged that he discovered his career path after watching a lot of movies as a kid. "I have been weirdly disciplined since I was seven or eight years old," he said. "... I found out about NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the film school there, and I was like, 'Okay, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go there after high school.'"

Wolfhard seemingly abandoned the college idea when he realized how much education he was getting in the industry already, but that has not slowed down his progress. In 2017, he co-directed a music video for Spendtime Palace's "Sonora," and in 2020, he wrote and directed a short film, entitled "Night Shifts." Two years later, Deadline reported that Wolfhard was to make his directorial debut with "Hell of a Summer," alongside Billy Byrk, with whom he wrote the script. The collaborators were also slated to star in the movie together. In 2021, he loosely described the project to NME, saying, "It's a horror-comedy-slasher movie that takes place at a camp."

Being at the forefront of a number of successful spooky projects, Finn Wolfhard has become known for his work in horror and suspense media. Despite that, he is actually a huge fan of comedy, which he told Interview was his favorite of all genres. "Everyone always asks me, 'So what makes you want to do horror?' And I'm like, 'I don't know. It's kind of been all a coincidence,'" he told Vulture back in 2020. "... There's always that thing of being typecast, but I think people are starting to notice that I'm not just, like, into horror and stuff. I can be versatile." He likes comedy so much that he even took improv classes at one point, according to The Guardian.

The actor has arguably allowed his comedy chops to be seen with his performances in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," "Stranger Things," and even "It" showing off his prowess for comic timing, as has some of his voiceover work. However, as of 2022, Wolfhard has yet to do a straight-up comedy vehicle. As he told Vulture, he's particularly interested in stories revolving around awkward characters and scenarios such as "Booksmart" and "Superbad." "There's something so amazing, so great about showing a teenage life that's so naïve," he explained. "... I love ensemble teen comedies where the whole cast is in for the ride, and if one person falls the entire cast falls. Everyone needs to be equally as good and kind of leaning on each other."

"The Goldfinch" was a high-profile film adaptation, based upon Donna Tartt's bestselling novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2014. Finn Wolfhard played a key role as the young version of the character Boris, the Eastern European friend of the main character, Theodore Decker. According to Box Office Mojo, the film grossed only $9.9 million worldwide, despite a budget of $45 million. Sadly, it also fared pretty terribly with critics as well, earning a dismal 25% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. 

In an interview with Film Ink, Wolfhard and Anerurin Barnard, who played the older version of Boris, explained that the well-traveled character also had a mixed heritage of Russian and Ukrainian, which resulted in a unique accent. Regardless, it drew Wolfhard some detractors for his vocal performance. "I definitely did not have a near-perfect accent but when I got the role, I trained really hard for it," he told August Man. "A dialect coach named Kristina Nazarevskaia walked me through everything including the Russian alphabet and the sounds it made." 

Because he was playing the same character as another actor, he also had to pattern his performance off of what his counterpart was doing. "Aneurin ... was shooting first so I almost had to work off of him," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Our director John Crowley got soundbites from him and saved them so I could listen to them and [hear] how he spoke and what his mannerisms were."

Like any popular actor, Finn Wolfhard has had some crazy fan experiences. Sudden fame would be hard for any adult to handle, let alone a child who has barely reached his teens. Couple that with a lack of boundaries practiced by some fans and it can lead to some frightening encounters. The actor has been open about how some of these have taken a toll on him, telling Teen Vogue when he was 14, "I realized, it's cool if it's a 13-year-old ... But when it's grown men in a line, spending their day screaming at children ... that's really scary for me."

While promoting "The Turning," the actor was asked by Los Angeles Magazine about what the scariest moment in his life had been. After thinking about it, he noted that it had to do with fame and fandom. Wolfhard recalled an experience he had when filming "It" in Toronto, Ontario, in which a couple appeared to be chasing him back to his apartment. "I was thinking the whole time, 'These people are following me. That's not right.' And finally I got to my door, and they were like, 'Can we have a picture with you?'," he told the magazine. "And I remember being like, 'No! You just followed me back to my home! You know where I live!'" Overzealous fans aside, Wolfhard has managed to keep a level head amidst his staggering early fame.

There are a lot of downsides to being a working child actor. For starters, there are the long hours, not being able to hang out with friends, and dealing with a large amount of responsibility at a young age. But with these drawbacks come immense benefits such as the ability to start earning big money at a very young age. At 19, Finn Wolfhard was already a multi-millionaire and had been for a couple of years. According to Celebrity Net Worth, the actor was estimated to have $4 million to his name, as of 2022.

While exact figures on his income are unknown, it's safe to say that he's likely been generating the majority of that money from his acting career. That's hardly a surprise given his huge profile and the massive budgets of the movies he's starred in. Still, it seems likely that the bulk of his income stems from his "Stranger Things" role. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Wolfhard and his fellow child actors were making something in the region of $20,000 per episode for Season 1 and Season 2 of the show. Once the show took off, he and the rest of the young cast enjoyed a reported $60,000 bonus and a significant pay rise, with Wolfhard thought to be pocketing $250,000 per episode by Season 3. As of 2022, it was unknown if he enjoyed yet another pay rise for Season 4 and Season 5 of the show. Either way, his bank account is likely sitting pretty.