Jacob Elordi’s “Frankenstein” Journey: From Blockbuster Curse to Guillermo del Toro’s Monster
A childhood encounter with the unsettling imagery of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth sparked a peculiar belief in actor Jacob Elordi – a belief that he was destined to play a monster. Now, that destiny has materialized in del Toro’s long-awaited adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, hitting theaters Friday and streaming on Netflix November 7. Elordi, 28, delivers a haunting performance as the Creature, a role he feels inextricably linked to by a strange twist of fate.
A Childhood “Curse” and a Prophetic DVD
The story begins not on a film set, but in the aisles of a Blockbuster Video. As Elordi recalls, a youthful fascination with the DVD cover of Pan’s Labyrinth – specifically, the Pale Man with eyes in his palms – captivated him. “My mother remembers this,” Elordi shared in a recent interview. “I came running through the corridor and I was like, ‘I need this DVD.’ And she was like, ‘That’s so much blood and gore. You can’t watch it.’”
Del Toro himself chimes in, adding, “She told you, ‘I’ll get it if you promise never to work with that director.’” While his mother initially forbade him from watching the film, Elordi eventually did, and the experience profoundly impacted him. “From that moment, because of the way that Guillermo wills magic into the world and into his life, I feel like there was some kind of curse set upon me,” Elordi says, acknowledging the seemingly outlandish nature of his conviction.
From “Euphoria” to the Creature: A Role Foretold
Elordi’s rise in Hollywood has been swift, with notable roles in the hit series Euphoria and the provocative thriller Saltburn. However, the role of the Creature in Frankenstein feels different, almost preordained. He even recalls an early critique of his acting that inadvertently foreshadowed this moment. “Early in my career, I had been reading what folks on the internet would say about me and someone had written after my first film, ‘The only thing this plank of wood could play is Frankenstein’s Creature. Get him off my screen!’” Elordi recounts with a laugh. “I went, ‘That’s an absolutely fantastic idea.’”
This thought resurfaced while filming Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla in 2023, when the hair and makeup team mentioned their next project: del Toro’s Frankenstein. “I looked at [hair designer] Cliona [Furey] and I said, ‘I’m supposed to be in that movie,’” Elordi remembers. “And she said, ‘Did you audition?’ And I was like, ‘No, but I’m meant to be in that movie.’”
A Last-Minute Casting and a Deep Dive into Darkness
Fate intervened when Andrew Garfield, originally cast as the Creature, had to withdraw due to scheduling conflicts. Del Toro, facing a tight deadline, quickly turned to Elordi. The actor was given the script with a single instruction: be ready to commit. “I had a few weeks to prepare, but I was lucky to have also had my whole life — and I mean that sincerely,” Elordi explains. “Playing this was an exploration into a cave of the self, into every experience with my father, with my mother, my experience with cinema, my scraped knees when I was 7.”
Del Toro was immediately convinced of Elordi’s suitability, telling Oscar Isaac, who plays Victor Frankenstein, that Elordi possessed the duality to embody both “Adam and Jesus,” the two core facets of the Creature. “I don’t think I’ve experienced miracles many times in my life,” Del Toro states. “And when somebody comes to your life in any capacity that transforms it, that happened here. This man is a miracle for this film.”
Building the Creature: A Physical and Emotional Transformation
To prepare for the role, Elordi immersed himself in a challenging reading list curated by del Toro, including the Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Book of Job, and a text on infant development. Del Toro emphasized the importance of portraying “nothing,” the blank slate of a newly created consciousness. “A baby is everything at once,” Elordi explains. “It’s deep pain, deep joy, curiosity. And you don’t have chambers for your thoughts yet.”
The physical transformation was equally demanding. Elordi endured hours in the makeup chair, sometimes up to ten hours for full-body prosthetics, to become the Creature. “Jacob wanted to wear the makeup and he knew it would be grueling,” says makeup artist Mike Hill. The result, Hill explains, was a deliberate choice to avoid typical monster tropes. “We agreed — no scars. No sutures. No vulgarity.” Instead, they aimed for a “marble-statue look” with subtle, iridescent flesh tones, creating a being that was both terrifying and heartbreakingly beautiful.
Elordi’s dedication extended beyond the makeup chair. Having recently lost weight while filming another project, he embraced the resulting fragility as a tool for portraying the Creature’s vulnerability. “My brain was kind of all over the place,” he admits. “I had these moments of great anguish at around 3 a.m. in the morning. I’d wake and my body was in such pain. And I just realized that it was a blessing with ‘Frankenstein’ coming up, because I could articulate these feelings, this suffering.”
A Search for Meaning and the “Unbearable Weight of Being”
For Elordi, taking on the role of the Creature coincided with a personal crisis of purpose. “At that time in my life I really wanted to hide,” he confesses. “I really wanted to go away for a while. I was desperate to find some kind of normalcy and rebuild the way that I acted and how I approached making movies.” He found solace in the Creature’s isolation, viewing the mask of makeup as a form of liberation.
The role forced him to confront fundamental questions about identity and existence. “Who do I think I am? Who do I present myself as? What do I like? What don’t I like? Do I love? Can I love? What is love? Every single thing of being alive,” he reflects with a smile. “The unbearable weight of being.”
Ultimately, Elordi’s transformation into the Creature wasn’t just physical; it was a profound act of self-discovery. “I was liberated in this makeup,” he says. “I didn’t have to be this version of myself anymore. In those six months, I completely rebuilt myself. And I came out of this film with a whole new skin.” Whether guided by a childhood “curse” or a stroke of cinematic serendipity, Jacob Elordi’s portrayal of the Creature promises to be a defining moment in his career, and a haunting addition to the legacy of Frankenstein.
