In the shadowy bowels of Toronto’s massive Revival Studios, where Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited Frankenstein was pieced together like the monster itself, something unholy happened that nearly derailed the entire production. Jacob Elordi—the 6’5″ Australian heartthrob known for brooding in Euphoria and devouring scenes in Saltburn—locked himself in a vocal coaching room for up to 14 hours a day, rasping, growling, and screaming until his throat literally bled. Medics rushed him to Toronto General Hospital one freezing February night in 2024 for emergency treatment and an overnight stay. But that was only the prelude.

The real horror exploded weeks later during a closed-set rehearsal of the Creature’s agonizing “birth” scene. Elordi, buried under 42 prosthetic pieces, contacts that turned his eyes corpse-milky, and dentures that warped his speech into something primal, suddenly broke character. Tears streamed down his scarred makeup as he collapsed to his knees in front of del Toro and a skeleton crew of 12. Through choking sobs, he uttered one sentence that turned every face in the room the color of graveyard ash:

“I can’t become the thing that destroyed my childhood.”

Then—blackout. The 27-year-old fainted dead away on the cold concrete floor, his massive frame crumpling like a marionette with cut strings. Chaos erupted. Del Toro, visibly shaken, cleared the set while medics revived him with smelling salts and oxygen. For 45 agonizing minutes, the Oscar-winning director feared his dream project—and his star—might both be lost forever.

Sources inside the production, speaking exclusively to StarPulse on condition of anonymity, reveal this wasn’t method-acting gone wrong. It was a terrifying secret Elordi had buried for years finally clawing its way out, triggered by the role that demanded he confront the monster he once believed lived inside his own home.

The Childhood Trauma That Nearly Ended Everything

Jacob Elordi grew up in Brisbane, Australia, the youngest of four in a working-class Catholic family. What the public never knew—what he had only confided to a handful of therapists and one trusted friend—was that between ages 8 and 12, he endured nightly terror from a family member whose drunken rages turned their home into a war zone. “He called it ‘the monster in the hallway,'” a close set source whispers. “Screaming, smashing things, threats that made Jacob hide under his bed praying for morning. He never told anyone because he loved the person when they were sober. The guilt and fear ate him alive.”

When del Toro cast him—after Andrew Garfield exited due to strike scheduling—Elordi saw the Creature as catharsis. “This is my chance to finally play the monster instead of running from it,” he reportedly told his agent. Del Toro, obsessed with wounded outcasts since childhood, handed Elordi a leather-bound journal on day one: “Write as the Creature every day. Let him speak the things you cannot.”

Elordi did. For months.

He filled pages with the Creature’s loneliness, rage, and desperate plea for love—words that began mirroring his own childhood nightmares with terrifying precision. The vocal work was meant to give the Creature a voice that started as guttural moans and evolved into eloquent tragedy, inspired by Boris Karloff’s grunts giving way to Mary Shelley’s articulate being. But each session ripped open old wounds.

“Jacob was pushing his voice to places no human throat should go,” vocal coach Denise Woods reveals. “He wanted the Creature to sound like pain itself had learned language. One day he hit a note—a primordial scream of abandonment—and blood just… appeared. He looked in the mirror, saw red dripping from his lips, and whispered, ‘Just like Dad used to.’ That’s when the cracks really started showing.”

The Breaking Point: “I Can’t Become Him”

The meltdown occurred during rehearsal of the iconic awakening sequence. Elordi, suspended in harnesses to simulate the Creature’s first convulsions, was supposed to roar a single word: “Alive!”

Instead, what came out was a child’s broken sob: “Why did you make me?”

Del Toro called cut, concerned. Elordi—still in full makeup that took five hours to apply—ripped off the harness and stumbled forward. Crew members describe what happened next like a horror scene come to life.

“He fell to his knees right in front of Guillermo,” one witness recalls, voice shaking even now. “Tears cutting rivers through the prosthetics. He grabbed del Toro’s shirt and said, ‘I can’t become the thing that destroyed my childhood.’ Then his eyes rolled back and he just… dropped. Like someone flipped a switch.”

Del Toro, a director famous for protecting his actors like family, immediately shut down production for three days. He canceled weekend shoots, sent the crew home, and sat with Elordi in his trailer until dawn—two men who understand monsters better than most, talking about fathers, abandonment, and the terror of seeing your worst fear reflected in a mirror.

“Guillermo told him, ‘The Creature isn’t the monster—Victor is. You’re not becoming your fear. You’re giving it a voice so it can’t hurt you anymore,'” a production insider reveals. “Jacob cried harder than anyone has ever seen him cry. But something shifted after that night.”

The Turnaround: From Near-Quit to Career-Defining Triumph

The next morning, Elordi almost walked. His manager was on the phone with Netflix executives discussing replacement options (rumors swirled of emergency calls to Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight co-star Ethan Hawke). But del Toro refused to let him go.

Instead, the director did something unprecedented: He rewrote sections of the script overnight, weaving echoes of Elordi’s real pain into the Creature’s monologue about being “born in agony, abandoned in blood.” He brought in a trauma specialist (disguised as a “performance consultant”) and adjusted shooting so Elordi never worked more than 10 hours in full makeup again.

Most powerfully, del Toro shared his own childhood stories—growing up in Guadalajara with a strict father who once locked him in a closet for drawing monsters instead of saints. “We are all Frankenstein’s children,” he told Jacob. “Some of us just get to play the monster on camera.”

Something broke open in Elordi that day. He returned to set transformed—not broken, but reborn.

The performance that resulted is being called the greatest portrayal of the Creature since Boris Karloff. Critics who saw early cuts at test screenings describe scenes where Elordi’s eyes alone convey centuries of sorrow. One Oscar voter whispered after a private screening: “He doesn’t act the pain—he bleeds it.”

The Secret That Healed Him

Months later, at the film’s Venice premiere, Elordi finally spoke publicly—not about quitting, but about healing.

“That role didn’t almost destroy me,” he told reporters on the red carpet, voice steady. “It saved me. For the first time, the monster had a face that wasn’t the one haunting my childhood. And when I looked in the mirror and saw him looking back… I wasn’t afraid anymore.”

Del Toro, standing beside him with tears in his eyes, added simply: “Sometimes the creature isn’t the one stitched together. Sometimes it’s the child who survives.”

As Frankenstein storms theaters and Netflix this November—already generating Oscar buzz louder than thunder—Jacob Elordi’s terrifying secret has become the industry’s worst-kept open secret. The boy who once hid from monsters grew up to become one… and in doing so, finally set himself free.

Sometimes the most horrifying stories aren’t on screen.

They’re the ones we survive to tell.