Australian actor (born 1997)
Jacob Elordi |
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 Elordi in 2020 |
| Born | (1997-06-26) 26 June 1997 (age 26)
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| Occupation | Actor |
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| Years active | 2015–present |
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Jacob Elordi (born 26 June 1997) is an Australian actor. After moving from his hometown of Brisbane to Los Angeles in 2017 to pursue an acting career, he gained prominence through his role as Noah Flynn, the bad boy love interest of the The Kissing Booth film trilogy (2018–2021) on Netflix. He also became known for his main role as the troubled high school football player Nate Jacobs on the HBO teen drama series Euphoria (2019–present).
Elordi's supporting film roles in 2023 as Elvis Presley in the biopic Priscilla and as a wealthy university student in Saltburn earned him critical praise and a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for the latter.
Early life and education
Jacob Elordi was born on 26 June 1997[1] in Brisbane, Queensland, to a working class family consisting of his parents—John, a house painter who spent 13 years building the family's house, and Melissa, a stay-at-home mother and one-time cafeteria employee at Jacob's school—one older brother, and three older sisters.[2][3][4][5] John emigrated to Australia from the Basque Country at age eight.[6][7]
While a player on his school's rugby team, Elordi performed in school musicals starting at age 12, starring in productions of Seussical and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and he soon began taking acting classes.[8] He has stated that he was first inspired to become an actor by Heath Ledger, particularly because of his role in the 2008 film The Dark Knight.[9] He also played Oberon in a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At age 14, Elordi started practicing his American accent, modelling it after that of Vin Diesel.[2] He attempted modeling at his mother's suggestion at age 15, but was told he was too tall to fit into the sample clothes.[10] Elordi attended the private Roman Catholic, all-boys secondary schools of St Kevin's College, Melbourne, and St Joseph's College, Nudgee, in Brisbane.[5]
During his time playing rugby, Elordi was teammates with future Wallabies Rob Leota, Darcy Swain, Len Ikitau and Jordan Uelese.[11][12] Throughout secondary school, Elordi continued to play rugby until he broke a bone in his back during a match, which, according to him, pushed him away from athletics and toward acting.[10] He has stated that, after reading Waiting for Godot in a theater class at age 15, acting "became [his] church" and his personality changed as a result. His mother also encouraged him to pursue acting.[13] He was inspired by actors such as Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day-Lewis, Christian Bale, and Ledger and would read their biographies while emulating their behaviours.[14] He has stated that he "barely finished high school".[4] He later attended an acting school in Melbourne and moved to the United States in 2017 at age 19 to pursue a career in acting.[10][15]
Career
Elordi's first experience on a Hollywood film set was in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales as an extra. His first acting role was on the Australian film Swinging Safari in 2018, playing the role of Rooster.[16] Elordi starred in the Netflix romantic comedy film The Kissing Booth, which premiered in May 2018, as Noah Flynn, a "bad-boy jock" and the film's primary love interest.[17] Despite largely negative critical reception, the film became one of Netflix's most-watched titles in 2018 and brought Elordi to widespread fame.[18][19] He reprised the role in the sequels The Kissing Booth 2, which filmed in mid-2019 in Cape Town, and was released in July 2020; and The Kissing Booth 3, which was released on Netflix in August 2021.[17][20][21] In a 2023 interview for GQ, he stated that he had not wanted to make them, calling them "ridiculous" and stating that he did them to "do whatever the fuck [he had] to do" to become an actor in the United States.[22][23] He also spoke out against his objectification as a result of the films.[24]
After filming was completed for the first Kissing Booth film, Elordi moved to Los Angeles. He helped a friend of his film an audition for a role in Sam Levinson's HBO drama series Euphoria, a remake of the Israeli series of the same name. While occasionally sleeping in his car and couch surfing at friends' houses with little money left and his visa expiring soon, he auditioned for Euphoria himself, with plans for it to be his last audition before moving back home.[25][18][9][4] He was then selected to play Nate Jacobs, a troubled high school football player with an abusive father, whom he portrayed from the show's pilot episode in 2019.[3][26] Elordi described the character as "a narcissist" and "a sociopath", while Clay Skipper of British GQ described the character as an antihero.[8][4] The role was described by Maanya Sachdeva of The Guardian as an "impressive career pivot" for Elordi and Samantha Bergeson of IndieWire called it his breakout role.[27] He also appeared in the horror anthology film The Mortuary Collection (2019).[28] Elordi then starred in Lance Hool's 2020 romantic drama film 2 Hearts as Chris Gregory, a Loyola University freshman and the film's narrator, opposite Tiera Skovbye.[29] Entertainment Weekly's Maureen Lee Lenker wrote that his performance in the film was "ham-fistedly goofy", while Owen Gleiberman of Variety opined that Elordi was "done no favors by being in" 2 Hearts, also writing that his portrayal of Chris was "so show-offy about his 'sincerity' he turns it into a form of smarm".[30] He appeared later that year as Paul Hogan's son in the comedy film The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee.[31] In 2022, he appeared as Charlie, a piano teacher and one of Ana de Armas's character's lovers, in Adrian Lyne's erotic thriller Deep Water, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1957 novel of the same name.[32][33]
In 2023, Elordi starred as Ian, a British film actor, in Sean Price Williams' drama film The Sweet East, which premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.[34][35] Williams based Elordi's character in the film on Robert Pattinson following his role in The Twilight Saga.[4] He next portrayed a controlling Elvis Presley in the Sofia Coppola–directed Priscilla Presley biopic Priscilla, which is based on Priscilla's memoir Elvis and Me.[36] Coppola chose Elordi to play the role partially because of his "effect on women" during their first meeting, which she found comparable to Elvis's.[2] Priscilla premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival, where it was met with positive reception.[37] His performance in the film was often compared by critics to that of Austin Butler in Elvis (2022).[38][39][40] Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote that Elordi "carefully calibrates Elvis's appeal and his pill-addled, domineering presence, his exacting demands and storms of frightening anger [in] a more enlightening take on the man than the one seen in Elvis".[39]
In his final release of 2023, Elordi starred in Emerald Fennell's psychological drama Saltburn as Felix Catton, a wealthy and charismatic British Oxford University student.[41][42][43] Critics from Empire, The Detroit News, and the Chicago Sun-Times described it as a star-making role for Elordi,[44][45][46] while Nicholas Barber of BBC News described him in the film as "a revelation" and Marshall Shaffer of Slant wrote that his performance was "the secret weapon of Saltburn";[47][48] for the role, he earned a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.[49]
In 2024, Elordi hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live.[50] The episode received mostly negative critical reception for what critics found to be a heavy reliance on jokes about Elordi's attractiveness.[51] Elordi will next star in Oh, Canada, a drama film directed by Paul Schrader, in which he will play the younger version of Richard Gere's character.[2] He will also play the lead role in a miniseries adaptation of the novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North[52] and Frankenstein's monster in the Netflix horror film Dr. Frankenstein, directed by Guillermo del Toro.[53]
Public image
Starting with his roles in The Kissing Booth films and continuing into the 2020s, Elordi became known as a heartthrob[54][55][23][56] and sex symbol[57][10] for Generation Z in the media. Gabriella Paiella of GQ wrote that Elordi had "classic, undeniable leading man looks", while Larisha Paul of Rolling Stone called him "Hollywood's reigning heartthrob of the 2020s".[2][58] Esther Zuckerman wrote of Elordi in The Atlantic, "If you know two things about the Saltburn and Priscilla star Jacob Elordi, you're probably aware that he's very tall ... and very handsome in a classical way."[59]
For his breakout film roles of 2023, Ella Kemp of the Evening Standard described Elordi as "decidedly 2023's big screen golden boy".[60] Elordi's relationships, including with Euphoria costar Zendaya, model Kaia Gerber, The Kissing Booth co-star Joey King, and YouTuber Olivia Jade, also received widespread coverage in tabloids and on social media.[3][10][14]
Elordi was the face of Hugo Boss's Boss the Scent fragrance in January 2022.[61] In March 2023, he became a global brand ambassador for the Swiss watch company TAG Heuer.[62][63]
In February 2024, Joshua Fox, a producer for the KIIS 106.5 radio show The Kyle and Jackie O Show, alleged on the show that, after Fox asked Elordi for his bath water—a reference to his role in Saltburn—as a gift for host Jackie O, Elordi pushed him and put his hands around his neck.[64] As of February 2024[update], the New South Wales Police Force are investigating the allegations.[65]
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