Jacob Elordi, the Aussie actor with movie star good looks…

Illustration by Andy Bunday

The late influential film critic, Pauline Kael said: “An artist must either give up art or develop.” She could be speaking of Australian actor Jacob Elordi.

At 6ft 5in with classic movie star looks, Elordi, 28, is increasingly the gen Z leading man du jour. Yet he’s also forging a reputation for creative resolve – a determination to prove he’s not just another Hollywood pretty boy. He wants more.

Elordi recently won the Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing the creature in Frankenstein, Guillermo Del Toro’s bold £120m Netflix adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. His rank outsider win – in a category including Sean Penn (One Battle After Another) and Paul Mescal (Hamnet) – could signal an Oscar nomination in the announcements next week.

Elordi also received two Golden Globe nominations: the first for Frankenstein; the second for Best Actor for the limited television series, The Narrow Road To The Deep North. The Globes went to Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value) and Stephen Graham (Adolescence). Adolescence’s Owen Cooper is playing the younger version of Elordi’s Heathcliff opposite Margot Robbie in Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

Elordi is also reported to be one of the favourites of Dune director Denis Villeneuve to become the new James Bond. He’s also set to star in Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie, The Dog Stars.

The actor’s previous appearances include Fennell’s Saltburn, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, and Oh, Canada, written and directed by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull). Seemingly averse to superhero franchises, Elordi refused to audition for James Gunn’s Superman.

“The interesting thing about Jacob Elordi is that he’s a character actor in a leading man’s body,” observes Henry Wong, senior culture writer at Esquire magazine. “He makes these fascinating choices.”

For Frankenstein, the award-winning design from special effects artist Mike Hill involved Elordi spending up to 10 hours a day in the make-up chair. The actor drew from Butoh – the expressionistic, influential Japanese dance form – to conjure a creature as fey and melancholy as it is frightening.

Joel Meadows, editor-in-chief of Tripwire magazine, which focuses on genre culture, feels that the depiction complements canonical portrayals from Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee: “Elordi conveys the physical power but also the vulnerability of the creature. It’s the bleaker, more romantic version. He brings human empathy to the role.”

Starting out, Elordi seemed destined to play standard-issue beefcake – such as in his debut in the hit 2018 Netflix teen-flick, The Kissing Booth. However, in his next role, he lent startling substance to Nate, the jock anti-hero, in Euphoria, Sam Levinson’s nihilistic series about California high schoolers (returning to Sky Atlantic in April).

Elordi made another astute choice in returning to Australia for the relatively low-budget, critically acclaimed series, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (which aired on BBC1 in the UK). Based on Richard Flanagan’s novel –which won the Booker Prize in 2014 – it was directed by fellow Australian, Justin Kurzel (Snowtown; The Order). Elordi portrays a second world war prisoner of the Japanese, stationed on the deadly Burma railway.

Kurzel tells me that, during filming, he was struck by Elordi’s “cinematic presence – the old-style movie star quality he has. Australia is very good at producing masculine, charismatic actors – Jacob has that, but there’s also something sophisticated about him.” The director adds, “He’s not interested in being famous. He’s always reading, he’s always watching films, he’s into it for all the right reasons.”

Flanagan tells me he noted an unusual quality – “An inner solitude” about Elordi. “Jacob wants to make work that will stand up in 20, 50 years” he says. “He’s got an ambition as an artist, which is not so common these days. He believes that acting is something worth aspiring to, that there’s some greater goal there. I think art is what results when you risk your life. And he’s willing to risk his life.”

Elordi had a loving, supportive working class upbringing in Brisbane, with a stay-at-home mother, and a house-painter father. Although Elordi now lives in Los Angeles, Wong feels that his normal background significantly adds to his appeal: “We don’t know a ton about him. At a time when celebrities are so present, one of the main currencies you can have these days is mystique.”

Pursuing sport and acting at school, Elordi revered screen legends such as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and Daniel Day-Lewis. This would appear to underlie his creative drive; the preference for roles, furthermore, that deploy his textbook handsomeness to subvert expectations and layer characterisation: the emotionally disconnected Nate in Euphoria; the elegiac Elvis Presley in Priscilla; the dissolute Felix in Saltburn, and so on.

Do we know this young actor? Does he want us to? Elordi’s struggles with fame and the media are well-documented. He’s recently rumoured to have reunited with longtime partner, social media influencer, Olivia Jade Giannulli. Past relationships – including Zendaya, his co-star from Euphoria, and Cindy Crawford’s daughter, the model Kaia Gerber – have been kept low profile. In a recent incident at the Gare de Nord station in Paris, a paparazzi cried: “Jacob, we love you!”, and he replied “I don’t love you. You make it really hard for me to live.”

Elordi also chafes at being labelled pretentious. “How is caring about your output pretentious?” he protested in a 2023 GQ magazine interview. He can be playful. As a style muse, he’s known for nonchalantly draping women’s designer handbags over his rangy frame. He’s affectionately larked around with Cooper at various awards ceremonies and he proudly escorted his parents to the Golden Globes.

Whatever happens at the Oscars, Meadows considers that Elordi is “somebody to watch. Over the next three or four years we’re going to see him climbing the ladder even more.”

Later this year, Elordi will start shooting an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 1968 novel, Outer Dark, alongside Lily-Rose Depp – marking the English-speaking debut of Oscar-winning Son Of Saul filmmaker, László Nemes.

It’s intriguing to think of Elordi as a natural outsider, marooned in a superstar body, working his way through a wish-list of projects, writers and directors. Still in his 20s, he appears to have worked out one of the toughest Hollywood lessons: that reputations are built on the roles you choose, but also on what you turn down.

Jacob Elordi is succeeding in making his leading man looks the least interesting thing about him.

Born Brisbane, 26 June 1997

Alma mater St Joseph’s Nudgee College