Few 2025 movie releases have me as pumped as Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. The upcoming Netflix film has drawn mixed reactions from critics, but that hasn’t dampened my anticipation. One reason I’m especially excited is Jacob Elordi’s take on the Creature. Ironically, the Saltburn actor may owe one of his most transformative roles to a ruthless internet comment. According to the Australian native, a brutal early review inspired him to play one of cinema’s most tragic monsters.
In a Los Angeles Times interview, Elordi reflected on his early years in Hollywood and the impact of that single cutting comment. When he was just starting out, the actor can admit he spent too much time reading what people online had to say about him, until one remark unexpectedly stuck. The 28-year-old actor said:
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!’ I went, ‘That’s an absolutely fantastic idea.’
It’s the kind of insult that might crush most young actors, but for the Euphoria veteran, it planted a seed that would later bloom into his most physically and emotionally demanding performance yet. In Frankenstein, directed by Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro, Elordi steps into the role of the Creature opposite Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein, and in a role that was initially offered to Andrew Garfield. Beneath layers of intricate prosthetics and makeup, he portrays a being newly aware of existence, and unaware that being assembled from corpses doesn’t inspire comfort.
One person who clearly has faith in the young star to pull off del Toro’s “emotional” retelling is the movie’s director, who told The Times that Elordi’s portrayal carries an “innocence” that sets this version apart, describing his Creature as “heartbreakingly uncanny but hypnotically human.” Makeup designer Mike Hill echoed that sentiment, praising the performer’s ability to channel both animalistic rage and fragile vulnerability, often in the same scene.
For The Kissing Booth actor, the connection to the role wasn’t just on a professional level, but also deeply personal. The pull to play the Creature felt almost fated. As he put it:
It came from some other place. It felt like a growth, like a cancer in my stomach that told me that I had to play this thing. I’ve heard stories about this from actors, and when you hear them, you kind of go, ‘Sure, you were meant to play this thing.’ But I really feel like I was.
When production began, the actor spent as long as ten hours in the makeup chair, enduring the physical transformation with what he described as a “religious excitement.” His performance comes at a pivotal time in his career, following breakout turns in Euphoria, Priscilla, and the previously mentioned Saltburn. But Frankenstein, with its themes of isolation, identity, and creation, seems to have hit closer to home. “At that time in my life, I really wanted to hide,” Elordi said, adding:
I was desperate to find some kind of normalcy and rebuild the way that I acted and how I approached making movies… And when the film came along, I remember being like, ‘Ugh, I really wanted to go away right now.’ And I realized immediately the Creature was where I was supposed to go away to. I was supposed to go into that mask of freedom.
It’s a poetic full circle for the young actor who was once dismissed as lifeless, now embodying one of cinema’s most soulful monsters. That cruel comment from years ago may have been meant as an insult, but for Elordi, it became the spark that brought Frankenstein’s Creature and a new chapter of his career to life.
Jacob Elordi stars alongside Mia Goth and Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein, which began its limited theatrical run on October 17 before arriving on streaming via Netflix subscription on November 7.
