Millie Bobby Brown on Why She’s Ready to Get Married to Jake Bongiovi at 19

Millie Bobby Brown is in the last year of her teens, but she has no doubt that marrying her 21-year-old fiancé Jake Bongiovi, whom she has been dating for over two years, is the right next step for her.

Brown addressed those critical of her getting married so young in her new interview with Glamour, saying that throughout her life, she has learned to trust her intuition regarding her right timing.

“It’s like—I know I should make this movie now. I know I should write this book now. I know I should do this now,” she said. “It’s not because I can’t do it in 10 years; of course I can do it in 10 years. But why, when I know that it’s going to work now? Just like Florence [her beauty line] will be there in 10 years. You’ll be able to see my movie in 10 years on TV. And I know that Jake and I will be okay.” She got that mentality from her family, she added, and how they approached her acting career. “It’s like, why wait? Let’s go for it.”

Brown and Bongiovi also have parents who married young and are still together. “We were modeled wonderful, loving relationships,” she said. “So it’s something that we both had that mutual drive for.” They are close with both families, as well. “His family were so wonderfully accepting of me and embraced me, and it’s so nice to find a second family in that.”

Brown also spoke about falling in love with him. Before she dated him, she says she was “I think I was so afraid to be a strong woman in a relationship.” She had been hesitant to take up too much space.

“When I met Jake, I just felt I could be loud,” she said. “He embraced that and encouraged that. And I fell in love with myself while being with him.”

She then referenced one specific conversation between the two of them. “I was like, ‘Why do you love me?’” she recalled. “And then he listed all these things that I hated about myself. I was like, ‘You see good in those things?’ And he was like, ‘Of course I do.’ Those are things that I love about myself now. He was a really big, huge part of me loving myself and becoming a woman. It was like, ‘Wow, I really love this person because he allows me to love myself.’”

“He’s so kind,” she added. “And his heart is just loving and wonderful and smart.” Marriage hadn’t been her dream: “My dream was to have a baby. I wanted to be the woman that my mom is to me and I wanted to be the woman that my grandmother was to me. So that was never my, like, intention, to be a wife. But after meeting Jake and seeing, ‘Oh, I don’t have to be this stereotypical wife for him. He doesn’t want me to be that either. He wants me to go and do my thing and live my life, and he will hold my hand in the process of that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, I do want this.’”

Senior News and Strategy Editor

Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.