Jacob Elordi

• 1. Introduction

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  Jacob Elordi was sleeping in his car in Los Angeles when he prepared for what he believed would be his final audition. He had little money left. His visa was close to expiring. At times he was crashing on friends' couches, and a trip back to Australia was already the plan.

  The Australian actor did not go home. Within a few years his name sat beside an Academy Award nomination, and magazines were calling him a heartthrob. How did that gamble pay off? What turned a promising young athlete toward the stage in the first place? Why would an actor speak so bluntly about the film that made him famous? And what does it cost to be treated as a face first and a performer second?

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• 2. Brisbane, Melbourne, Bilbao

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  John Elordi was born in Markina-Xemein, in Spain's Basque Country, and left Bilbao for Australia when he was eight years old. The Francoist dictatorship was the reason his family left. John's own father, Joaquín Elordi, came from Ondarroa. In Brisbane, John worked as a house painter. His wife Melissa was a stay-at-home mother and school volunteer. Jacob was born on the 26th of June 1997, after three older sisters, in a working-class household.

  He spent his first twelve years in Brisbane. In 2010 he relocated to Melbourne because one of his sisters was attending the Australian Ballet School. In 2013, at sixteen, he went back to Brisbane to finish high school. He attended two private all-boys Catholic schools along the way. They were St Kevin's College in Melbourne and St Joseph's College, Nudgee, where he graduated in 2015.

  Sport came first. As a junior athlete he represented Victoria in both rugby union and basketball. In 2012 he belonged to the Victorian under-16 team that won the national basketball championship.

  The stage was running alongside the sport. From age twelve he performed in school musicals, taking leading parts in Seussical and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Acting classes followed soon after. He also played Oberon in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

  Heath Ledger gave him the first spark. It was Ledger's Joker in the 2008 film The Dark Knight that made him want to act. At fourteen he began working on an American accent, using Vin Diesel as his model. At fifteen he tried modelling on his mother's suggestion, but he was told he was too tall for the sample clothes.

  A back injury in a rugby match pushed him away from athletics. That same year, at fifteen, he read Waiting for Godot in a drama class. Acting, he later said, "became his church", and he felt his personality change. His mother encouraged him too. He read the biographies of Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day-Lewis, Christian Bale and Ledger, and he copied their behaviours.

  After a year at an acting school in Melbourne, he left for the United States in 2017, aged nineteen.

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• 3. The Kissing Booth Bargain

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  The 2017 film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales gave Elordi his first look at a Hollywood set. He appeared as an uncredited extra, reportedly as one of the redcoats. His first real acting role arrived the following year, as Rooster in the Australian film Swinging Safari.

  In May 2018 Netflix released the romantic comedy The Kissing Booth. Elordi played Noah Flynn, a so-called bad-boy jock who is the main love interest, opposite Joey King. Reviews were largely negative. Even so, the film became one of the most-watched titles on Netflix that year and made Elordi widely famous.

  He returned for two sequels. The Kissing Booth 2 was filmed in mid-2019 in Cape Town, South Africa, and came out in July 2020. The Kissing Booth 3 followed on Netflix in August 2021.

  In a 2023 interview with GQ, Elordi admitted he had never wanted to make the films. He called them "ridiculous" and said they were a means of getting established as an actor in the United States. He also criticised the way the films had turned him into an object of desire.

  Once the first film finished shooting, he moved to Los Angeles.

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• 4. Nate Jacobs

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  A friend's audition tape led Elordi to Euphoria. He helped the friend film it for a role in Sam Levinson's HBO drama, which remakes an Israeli series of the same name. Elordi then won a part himself. He played Nate Jacobs, a troubled high school football player with an abusive father, beginning with the pilot episode in 2019.

  Elordi did not soften the character in how he described him. He called Nate "a narcissist" and "a sociopath". Clay Skipper of British GQ saw an antihero instead.

  Critics treated the role as a turning point. Maanya Sachdeva of The Guardian described it as an "impressive career pivot". Samantha Bergeson of IndieWire called it his breakout role.

  Elordi stayed in a main role on the series from 2019 through 2026. In 2022 the Australian academy's AACTA Awards listed him for the Audience Choice Award for Best Actor, for this very part.

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• 5. Uneven Ground

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  The 2019 horror anthology The Mortuary Collection, in which he played Jake Matthews, was among his first screen credits after Euphoria began. A year later he starred in Lance Hool's romantic drama 2 Hearts as Chris Gregory, a college student who narrates the story. Maureen Lee Lenker of Entertainment Weekly found his work "ham-fistedly goofy". Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote that he was "done no favors by being in" the film.

  Also in 2020, he played the son of the title character in the Australian comedy The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee, as Chase Hogan. That year he also took the role of Mr. Darcy in an episode of Acting for a Cause titled "Pride and Prejudice". In 2022 Adrian Lyne cast him as Charlie, a piano teacher, in the erotic thriller Deep Water.

  At the 76th Cannes Film Festival in 2023, he appeared in Sean Price Williams' drama The Sweet East. His character, Ian, is a British film actor. Williams modelled him on Robert Pattinson after the Twilight Saga.

  His 2024 hosting turn on Saturday Night Live drew mostly negative reviews. Critics felt it leaned too heavily on jokes about his attractiveness. That year he also played the younger version of Richard Gere's character in Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada, a story about an aging documentary filmmaker. Critics pointed out how little the two men resembled each other. Elordi stands about half a foot taller than Gere.

  He Went That Way, a 2023 crime thriller adapted from Conrad Hilberry's 1987 novel Luke Karamazov, also served as an executive producer credit for him. He played Bobby, a nineteen-year-old serial killer. Reviews were negative. Glenn Kenny of The New York Times judged it to lack the discipline of his work in Priscilla.

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• 6. Elvis and Felix

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  Sofia Coppola chose Elordi to play Elvis Presley in Priscilla partly because of how he affected her at their first meeting. She felt his effect on women was comparable to Elvis's. Elordi himself was not drawn to the role, in part because of the singing and dancing it implied. He was, though, eager to work with Coppola.

  Priscilla, a biopic of Priscilla Presley with Cailee Spaeny in the title role, premiered in late 2023 at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. The reception was positive. Gabriella Ferlita of PinkNews wrote that he had earned countless words of praise for his version of The King. Critics often set his work beside Austin Butler's in the 2022 film Elvis. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair described Elordi's version as a "more enlightening take on the man than the one seen in Elvis".

  His last release of 2023 was Emerald Fennell's psychological drama Saltburn. He played Felix Catton, a wealthy and charismatic British student at Oxford University. Critics at Empire, The Detroit News and the Chicago Sun-Times each described the part as star-making. Nicholas Barber of BBC News called him "a revelation". Marshall Shaffer of Slant wrote that his performance was "the secret weapon of Saltburn". The role earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

  Fennell was not finished with him.

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• 7. Creature and Heathcliff

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  In the 2024 period drama On Swift Horses, Elordi played Julius, a gambler who falls in love with another man in 1950s Las Vegas. He was also an executive producer on the film. Robert Daniels of Screen Daily called his work "an electrifying performance". Jourdain Searles of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that this was his best performance yet and showed a more sensitive, vulnerable side.

  In 2025 he took the lead as Dorrigo Evans in a miniseries adaptation of the novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He then played the Creature, also known as Frankenstein's monster, in Guillermo del Toro's Netflix horror film Frankenstein. The film had its world premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival and was released on the 24th of October 2025.

  RogerEbert.com thought his performance was "marvelous in conveying the monster's intelligence, sensitivity, and inherent gentleness". The Washington Post called it "transformative". That same year he appeared in the music video for "Day One", a Bon Iver song featuring Dijon and Flock of Dimes.

  The miniseries and the film each earned him a nomination at the 83rd Golden Globe Awards. The first was for Best Actor in a Miniseries or Television Film, the second for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture. Frankenstein also brought a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and another BAFTA nomination.

  He reunited with Fennell in 2026 for her adaptation of Wuthering Heights, playing Heathcliff opposite Margot Robbie. The film was released on the 13th of February 2026. Heathcliff is depicted as a person of colour in the novel. Elordi answered questions about that choice by deferring to Fennell. "How can I serve the truth of my director?" he asked.

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• 8. The Heartthrob Question

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  Larisha Paul of Rolling Stone called Elordi "Hollywood's reigning heartthrob of the 2020s". By the early part of that decade the media had made him a heartthrob for Generation Z. Gabriella Paiella of GQ credited him with "classic, undeniable leading man looks". His height is 1.96 metres, and Esther Zuckerman of The Atlantic wrote that he was best known for being "very tall" and "very handsome in a classical way".

  His romantic life drew widespread media attention. He has been linked to his Kissing Booth co-star Joey King, his Euphoria co-star Zendaya, the model Kaia Gerber and the YouTuber Olivia Jade.

  Commerce followed the attention. In January 2022 he became the face of the Hugo Boss fragrance Boss the Scent. In March 2023 the Swiss watch company TAG Heuer named him a global brand ambassador.

  The attention also brought controversy. In February 2024 Joshua Fox, a producer on the radio programme The Kyle and Jackie O Show on KIIS 106.5, made an allegation on air. Fox said he had asked Elordi for his bath water as a gift for host Jackie O, a nod to Saltburn, and that Elordi pushed him and put his hands around his neck. The New South Wales Police Force were investigating the allegations.

  The next role on his calendar leaves the romance behind. He is set to appear as Hig in Ridley Scott's science fiction film The Dog Stars, scheduled for release on the 28th of August 2026.

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