How Jacob Elordi became a monster for Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’

Jacob Elordi was cursed when he was a child. It happened in the blockbuster aisle. The culprit of the spell was the image of the Pale Man from “Pan's Labyrinth” emblazoned eyes on the palms of the back cover of the DVD.

“My mom remembers this,” an energetic Elordi tells me in a Hollywood conference room. “I came running down the hall and thought, 'I need this DVD.' And she said, “That's so much blood and gore.” You can't watch this.”

“She told you, 'I'll have it if you promise.' never to work with this director,” chimes in Guillermo del Toro, director of the Oscar-winning dark fantasy, sitting next to Elordi.

His wish was granted, and Elordi watched Pan's Labyrinth at a young age. A fable about the Spanish Civil War changed him forever. “From that moment on, because of the way Guillermo puts magic into the world and into his life, I feel like I have some kind of curse placed on me,” says the actor. “I truly believe that, no matter how it sounds.”

Now Elordi, 28, stars as one of the Mexican director's monsters in his highly anticipated adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (in theaters Friday, then Netflix November 7). Beneath intricate prosthetics and makeup, Elordi plays the Creature, who is brought to life by arrogant scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) – a collection of dead limbs and organs imbued with a new consciousness.

Sensitive to tenderness but prone to violence, the nameless Creature now has in Elordi a performer to suit all his raw emotions. “I was constantly drawn to Jacob's innocence,” says makeup artist and prosthetics designer Mike Hill. “The creature could snap for a dime, like an animal.”

Capable of complex thought, Del Toro's version of the monster contemplates the punishment of existence and the cruelty of its creator. “It's almost like John Milton asking his creator,” the director says of the Creature's dialogue. “You have to give it a heartbreakingly creepy physicality, but at the same time hypnotically human.”

The imposingly lanky, gracefully handsome Australian-born Elordi has gained popularity over the past few years with roles in the hit TV series Euphoria and the psychosexual class-climbing thriller. “Saltburn”.

However, “Frankenstein” seems to have been calling his name for a long time.

“Early in my career, I read what people on the Internet were saying about me, and someone wrote after my first film: “The only thing this wooden board can play is Frankenstein’s creature. Get him off my screen!'” Elordi recalls. “I said, 'This is an absolutely fantastic idea.'

The idea came to Elordi's mind again while filming Sofia Coppola's 2023. “Priscilla” in which he played the moody, inner Elvis Presley. Cailee Spaenytitle character. Long before he was offered the role, the hair and makeup team on Priscilla shared with him that their next job was actually Del Toro's Frankenstein.

“I looked at [hair designer] Clone [Furey] and I said, “I have to be in this movie.” And she said, “Did you audition?” And I said, “No, but I’m meant to be in this movie.”

“It came from somewhere else,” Elordi further explains. “It was like a growth, like a cancer in my stomach that told me I had to play this thing. I've heard stories about it from actors, and when you hear them, you kind of think, “Of course you had to play that thing.” But I really feel like one.”

Due to scheduling conflicts, Andrew Garfield, originally cast as the Thing, dropped out of the project at the end of 2023. With production set to begin in early 2024, Del Toro had limited time to find a new actor. When Elordi finally found out he was being considered, he had to read the script within hours of receiving it and be prepared to go into darkness.

“I had a few weeks to prepare, but I was lucky to have my whole life – and I mean that sincerely,” he says with a smile on his face. “Playing this game was an exploration of the cave of myself, every experience with my father, my mother, my film experience, my scraped knees when I was 7.”

Del Toro says he knew Elordi would make the perfect Thing after talking to him over Zoom. He remembers immediately sending a message to Isaac, his Victor, convinced that Elordi could play both “Adam and Jesus,” the two facets the creature represents to the director.

“I don’t think I’ve experienced miracles many times in my life,” Del Toro says. “And when someone comes into your life in any capacity that changes it, it happens here. That person is a miracle for this movie.”

As is common with all actors in his films, Del Toro sent Elordi several books before working together. Elordi's deep reading list included the seminal Taoist reference book The Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell's well-regarded translation of the Book of Job, and a text on the stages of child development.

The most difficult element of the play, according to Del Toro, is the play of “nothing,” that is, the empty, pure state of mind of a living being in infancy. “A child is everything at once,” says Elordi. “This is deep pain, deep joy, curiosity. And you don't yet have chambers for your thoughts.”

Shortly before Frankenstein, Elordi was filming the Prime World War II miniseries The Narrow Road to the Deep North in Australia. He describes the experience as “grueling” and requiring significant weight loss. He turned the subsequent fragility of his body into a dramatic instrument.

“My brain was kind of a mess,” he recalls. “I had moments of intense sadness around 3 o'clock in the morning. I would wake up and feel such pain in my body. And I just realized that Frankenstein was a blessing because I could articulate these feelings, this suffering.”

In addition to breaking out of fatigue, the transformation also helped Elordi recalibrate. Frankenstein came at a time when he was facing a crisis of purpose.

“At that time in my life, I really wanted to hide,” Elordi says. “I really wanted to get away for a while. I was desperate to find some kind of normality and regain the way I acted and the way I approached making films,” Elordi says. “And when the movie came out, I remember saying, 'Wow, I really wanted to go.' right now.' And I immediately knew that the Creature was where I needed to go. I had to put on this mask of freedom.”

Was he trying to escape the pressures of budding fame? Elordi says it was much more philosophical.

“Who do I think I am? Who do I think I am? What do I like? What do I dislike? Do I love?” Maybe I love? What is love? Every particle of life,” he says with a radiant smile, “is an unbearable burden of existence.”

This part involved physically burying oneself in another body. This allowed Elordi to abandon all hang-ups, surrendering to a fugue state. Every moment felt like a discovery.

“I felt liberated with the makeup,” he adds. “I didn't have to be this version of myself anymore. In those six months, I completely rebuilt myself. And I came out of that movie with a completely new skin.”

Elordi sat in the makeup chair for 10 hours on days that required full-body makeup—four in total if they were only shooting the Thing's face. “Jacob wanted to wear makeup and knew it would be grueling,” Hill says.

“It was nothing short of a religious experience,” Elordi says. “The excitement I felt even after I got the cast—I was thrilled.”

Hill believes that the decision to make the Creature bald for scenes where he is a “baby” makes Del Toro's approach unique to the Frankenstein mythos.

“Instead of what happens with cloning, where a child grows up, Victor literally created a child, but a big one,” Hill says. “The Creature learns quickly because its brain and body have already lived once. God knows what this Creature knew before it forgot, and what it needed to be reminded.”

For the skin, Del Toro envisioned the marble statue look he used in earlier films like Cronos, Blade 2 and Blade 2. “The Devil's Backbone”

“Mike took it and made it incredibly subtle: flesh with violets and purples and mother-of-pearl,” says Del Toro. “He surpassed any concept I had ever imagined by making them look like bloodless body parts. It was so brilliant.”

According to Hill, Frankenstein's monster with rainbow flesh could only exist in the context of Del Toro's film.

“It had to look beautiful, like a phrenologist’s head or an anatomy textbook,” adds Del Toro. “We agreed – no scars. No stitches. No vulgarity.”

Del Toro's choice to play Elordi was fully confirmed when the actor first walked onto set in full makeup. “The whole process was a wait, says Elordi. “And then I opened my eyes and he looked at me, and it was exactly what I thought when I first read the script.”

For Hill, watching Elordi give interviews where his limbs seemed loose and relaxed convinced him that he was the kind of actor to cast the Thing after. “I thought, 'Look at these wrists.' And then he turns around and he has these eyelashes,” Hill says. “Big eyes lend themselves well to makeup. And structurally Jacob has a modest nose, so you can build on that.”

“And he has a big chin,” Hill continues, as Del Toro laughs loudly. “I thought, 'I'm not going to glue it.'

Surprised by having his anatomy dissected before him, Elordi claps back, mockingly defensive: “He was grotesque to look at, but he was somewhat gifted. A deformed, skinny freak.”

By the time Elordi stood up from the makeup chair, the electricity in his body had changed, he said. He walked onto the set physically exhausted, but in the perfect headspace to embody a creature navigating an inhospitable reality.

“It will forever be part of my chemistry,” says Elordi. “He's always been around and now I have a little place for him. But I can’t rationalize it.”

Be it a curse or a miracle, the Elordi Creature is alive. And the actor feels reborn.