Wolfhard: "It's really cool when the thing you are working on as a small team gets embraced by millions, but in the end, it's about your character and the script and your director and the rest of the cast and crew."

Wolfhard: "I think if I'm with a friend group, I try to be as funny as possible, and I don't always succeed, obviously."

Wolfhard: "For me, I need to listen to music in the morning, and after, it's kind of like a shower, you know what I mean? It's kind of getting rid of everything. I always play music after I act. It's not a conscious thing, like, 'Oh finally, I need to do this,' it's kind of a constant need."

Wolfhard: "I'm good at reading people. If I wasn't an actor, I would be a psychologist."

Wolfhard: "I try to keep my voice natural for each character, but the spirit and the cadence and breathing for each character is totally different. It's those things that set each role apart from the others."

Wolfhard: "Doing a scene by yourself is scarier - you know you don't have other people to fall back on."

Wolfhard: "I definitely do have a persona onstage. I definitely am a completely different person, but I'm still having a lot of fun and there's a lot of acting that goes into it. But I haven't been playing many shows when I'm working on acting as much because it's tiring, number one. And number two, it's hard for your mind to make up what it wants to do."

Wolfhard: "Everyone wants to be funny. Maybe not everyone, but to an extent."

Wolfhard: “I was always confused why young people weren’t taken seriously. When I was younger I would ask, Why don’t they give big budget action movies to kids? Just give a seven-year-old an unlimited amount of money – do you know how insane that would be? The imagination? It wouldn’t make any sense. It would be completely mad. But you’d see the passion and everyone would love it – everyone would go and see it. I didn’t understand that when I was younger, and I still don’t understand that as a 17-year-old. I mean, I understand, but I’ve always tried to push that boundary, of what I can do at my age.”

Wolfhard: "I mean if anyone's comfortable being famous, they're a psychopath."

Wolfhard: “At the end of the road, I want to look back and say I sat in a room with all of my friends and laughed really hard and we all made something together and we did it over and over and over again. That’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

Wolfhard: "If I lounge around for too long, I get really bored. I have to be doing something."

Wolfhard: "My favorite thing is to have collectives. Even when it comes to filmmaking as well, filmmaking and music and most art in general, I feel like everyone should have the same say. If you're in a collective, I feel like everyone should have the same say."

Wolfhard: "The more I read scripts, the more I learn about scripts, basically."

[On how music shapes and inspires his acting performances]

Wolfhard: “It’s two sides of the same coin. I always listen to music on the way to set, and on the way back from set – that’s a routine that I have without realising it. If I have a scene that’s more energetic, I’ll listen to punk music to get me [in the zone], or music that’ll jack me up like loud rap or whatever.”

Wolfhard: “I had come into my body a little more with puberty, and I thought my body was really funny.”

Wolfhard: “In my head, I couldn’t let loose in any certain way. I thought that if I would have gone with a friend to a party, my career would have been over. You’re afraid that someone can see you as a 14-year-old at a party with a beer in your hand, and it can all go away. That was my thought.”

Wolfhard: "Well, we shoot for so long on 'Stranger Things' that I know Atlanta really well."

Wolfhard: "My whole thing is having the perfect balance. Let's say I go to school. I have a day at school. That's the perfect amount of reality. Then I go and play music with my band. Then I go home and hang out with my family and my pets. I think that's the perfect amount of reality time."

Wolfhard: "I'd love to make a horror movie, that's definitely where I want to be one day."

Wolfhard: "Well, I kind of did the math in my head when I was like, 9. I was like, 'Well, if I want to make films' - because I want to be a director - 'I could just go on a film set and learn there.' And then I ended up falling in love with acting and the set and making friends all the time. And so I've just been doing that ever since."

Wolfhard: "I don't want to be mean to people. I try to be as nice as possible to everyone."

[On Stranger Things S4 being shut down due to the pandemic]

Wolfhard: “We were ahead of schedule, which has never happened before, because there’s never a realistic approach to scheduling, and then boom, it just stopped, and everyone had to go home, and everyone’s just so sad…”

Wolfhard: "The biggest thing for me, I hate going to concerts where no-one's moving. Everyone should be dancing and having a good time."

Wolfhard: “When I don’t want to do something, I’ll convince myself I don’t have to do it, but one side of my brain will be, like, ‘Oh, but this will be great for your writing.’”

Wolfhard: "I love acting, of course, and I would still love to keep acting, but I want to try my hands at so many things."

Wolfhard: “The normal teenage experience is you go to school and you go to parties once in a while… I’ve never really been into that stuff. What I like doing all the time is the stuff I like to do: movies and music.”

[On music]

Wolfhard: “I listen to it on the way to set. I listen to it at school, at home, when I write. It’s constantly in my head.”

[The Guardian: During lockdown, fans have approached him while forgetting the two-metre rule, which hasn’t been fantastic, he says, but which he understands.]

Wolfhard: “It’s like, if the world was ending and you saw Brad Pitt – and I’m not saying I’m Brad Pitt – but you would see him and you’d forget that the world was ending. It’s human. Even me, I’m guilty of it. I see celebrities and get awestruck and forget about everything else.”

Wolfhard: "One day I'm going to open up a club or a concert venue where it's all ages and really fun. That'd be awesome."

Wolfhard: "I never knew anyone who have growing up who had a clown at their birthday party. They are something I think of as being from the past. So I never had strong feelings about them. I do think that they can be creepy, I guess it depends on the clown."

Wolfhard: "Scary movies, for me, I used to be insanely scared of."

Wolfhard: "I don't take the Internet and social media very seriously. I've grown up around social media but to me what happens on the Internet just doesn't feel real."

Wolfhard: "Yeah, ever since I was super-young I had a lot of dreams - I wanted to be a musician, I wanted to be a skateboarder."

Wolfhard: "Like, everyone knows that we all need health care, but not only is it insanely expensive for most people in America, there are so many self-employed people who really struggle when faced with injury and disability and illness."

Wolfhard: "It was cool when the Duffers assigned a list of movies to watch."

[On what he learned from his band Calpurnia]

Wolfhard: “It shaped how music should be, what it should feel like [for me]. It should feel fun and it should be a release – a thing that you can escape to and feel like you have a voice and feel like you’re collaborating with people.”

Wolfhard: "The movies I was scared by at three or four are now some of my favorite movies of all time."

Wolfhard: “I’ve tried so hard to write drama and it’s impossible. I can’t do it. But when you have a sad life, a sad situation, there are always funny moments. Some people laugh at funerals. In sad situations there is always room for comedic property.”

Wolfhard: "To see a hacker actually hacking is not the most interesting thing visually, and it's pretty boring as an actor: a hacker taps on her keyboard. There's really not much more than that."

Wolfhard: "When I was younger, I acted in some Shakespeare stuff; I did one Shakespeare camp."

Wolfhard: "One time, when I was really young, my dad and brother were watching 'Team America,' the Trey Parker and Matt Stone movie. I walked in and they didn't know I was there, but I got really freaked out by the marionettes - just the look of them, their mouths, those grins. That cemented in my brain."

Wolfhard: "People deal with death differently; some even laugh at funerals."

Wolfhard: “Literally none of the songs on the Calpurnia EP were drawn from personal experience at all. I feel like now I really draw from personal experience and try to write how I feel. I didn’t really know how to do that at that point. I think I was too young to figure it out.”

Wolfhard: "I love '80s and '90s music."

Wolfhard: “The anxiety never goes away, but it’s something that becomes way easier to deal with. You need a little bit of anxiety to get out of bed in the morning.”

Wolfhard: "I need time to do whatever I want to do. What happens to an actor that has no life experience? They don't know how to act as a different role. So, that's really important to do."

Wolfhard: "I love retro culture. I love retro games; I love retro music."

Wolfhard: "I mainly use Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Those are my three."

Wolfhard: "Life gets weird enough without having to worry about whether you are covered for this or have to have a deductible for that, so the less stress when you are in need, the better."

Wolfhard: "I learn a new thing every single day about acting, about directing, about producing."

Wolfhard: "My parents were in high school and college in the '80s, so let's just say I've heard some stuff, man. We listen to a lot of music and watch lots of great films, but the real context they provide from that era is about politics."

Wolfhard: "Any chance I get to see a band that I like, I take it."

[On finding a new appreciation for most of his Stranger Things castmates since COVID]

Wolfhard: “When you start a show that young, there’s drama and there’s rivalries because it’s like school. And then you become older, and you stop caring. I think it’s actually such an incredible thing to come back to each other and be like, ‘Wow, I really understand you. We’re all going through this thing together. I love you.’”

Wolfhard: "My parents are great. On every job, my whole family and I try to get as many breaks as I can."

Wolfhard: "During 'Stranger Things 3,' I shot 'It: Chapter Two,' so I would shoot on my days off, which was super tiring and stressful, but really rewarding at the same time. Basically, I shot 'It: Chapter Two' and 'Stranger Things 3' at the same time."

Wolfhard: "I'm definitely not eager to grow up, but I do like some adult stuff."

Wolfhard: "I really would not be where I am today if I hadn't done those PUP videos. It just showed me so much. It taught me so much about music and acting and being your own boss."

Wolfhard: "I love learning on set, it's the best acting school ever."

Wolfhard: "I was raised in a household where kids' opinions were just as valued as adults and I think that was important for me."

Wolfhard: "Most of the fans of Calpurnia are 'Stranger Things' fans, which is not a big deal at all. They're super loyal and incredible, and really do like the music. It's the people who aren't fans of the music and are just there because of 'Stranger Things' that really bother me."

Wolfhard: "There's always something really bad that happens in 'Stranger Things,' I think the more fun we're having at the beginning, the higher the drop."

Wolfhard: "I don't want to get typecast and I've been doing a lot of stuff to make that happen and not be the case."

Paul Rudd: “Working with him, you would never know that. There’s nothing pretentious or high and mighty about him. He’s just a cool kid.”

The Guardian: Once he gets up, he never sits down. It’s not that he’s jittery. While he’s usually relentlessly busy with work, a kinetic bundle of oomph, lockdown has forced Wolfhard to accept calm, to embrace the enforced quiet, which he has decided is a good thing.

The Guardian: He also describes himself as "a crazy workaholic", which shows in his output.

The Guardian: For a while he thought he would go to film school and become a director. But his first experience of being an actor on set "totally changed my life", he says, and his second experience – another music video, this one very high drama (his character shoots a policeman) – confirmed the passion. He fell in love: with being on set, with being part of a group of like-minded people who somehow managed to film a load of independent scenes and make it into a whole.

The Guardian: In a recent interview, the actor Ryan Reynolds, who is also from Vancouver, said that friends the pair have in common describe Wolfhard as “disciplined and smart and charming and down to earth”, before asking how he stays so grounded. “If I were in the same boat in, let’s say 1990, I think it would be different,” Wolfhard tells me. “But because there are so many rules to keep children safe now, you know? Ask my co-stars. None of us have ever been in the position where, like, we’re at an uncomfortable party being served drinks… Don’t get me wrong, it happens. It depends on the person. But the environment I’ve grown up in has been very positive.”

The Guardian: He was grateful for school – that he could still attend, be a bit normal – but he didn’t enjoy it. “I always felt like everyone was going so much faster than I was,” he says, “and I could never catch up to them.”

The Washington Post: For Reitman, the way Finn “listens and acts through his limbs reminds me of the great teenage [performances] of the ’80s. Ferris Bueller, Marty McFly, Bender,” the director said in an email.

The Washington Post: In an age when social media posts are a currency often written into contracts and follower counts can serve as a deciding factor in casting, Wolfhard refuses to get caught up in the hype. He’s amassed more than 20 million Instagram followers but uses his verified account only for the requisite publicity posts because he finds the platform “anxiety-inducing and distracting.” Same with TikTok and Twitter, the latter of which he deleted entirely before returning to fulfill contractual promotional obligations for “Afterlife.”

The Washington Post: As his fame grew, so did the gulf between him and his “normal” childhood friends. They’d invite him to house parties. He’d instantly decline. They assumed he thought he was too good for them. He was secretly panicking that he’d lose everything with one wrong move.

The Washington Post: Those who’ve worked with Wolfhard praise the way he makes it all feel “effortless” and “easy,” but in private, he’s struggled with anxiety about performing, fame and life in general.

NME: The original Ghostbusters film is one that Wolfhard describes as “a big movie for him”. “My dad would quote it all the time,” he says, grinning at the memory. “It was a huge part of growing up. Being in the new one doesn’t feel real, I still haven’t figured it out yet.”

NME: When Wolfhard talks about his time on any set, you get the impression he is constantly absorbing and observing, keen to learn absolutely everything about the craft. It makes sense – he has designs on becoming a filmmaker himself.