From the Netflix pretty boy everyone dragged as “can’t act to save his life” to an overnight Best Supporting Actor Oscar contender, Jacob Elordi has left the whole world frozen as his name suddenly appeared on the official shortlist alongside living legends Robert Downey Jr. and Kieran Culkin. But what’s making millions of people sob right now isn’t the nomination… it’s the dark, brutal, almost unbelievable journey Jacob had to crawl through to reach this moment. You won’t believe what he survived behind that perfect smile… Click before the full story disappears!

Hollywood doesn’t do humble beginnings anymore—not when they’re this explosive. Picture this: It’s a crisp December morning in 2025, and the Academy drops its early shortlist for the 98th Oscars like a bombshell at a funeral. The room full of publicists, agents, and caffeine-fueled execs goes dead silent. Scrolling down the Best Supporting Actor contenders, eyes glaze over the expected heavy-hitters: Downey Jr., fresh off another Marvel-tinged triumph that’s got voters reminiscing about his Iron Man glory days; Culkin, channeling that Succession-era menace into a indie darling that’s already meme’d to death. But then—bam—there it is. Jacob Elordi. The 6’5″ Aussie heartthrob who once symbolized everything wrong with streaming slop. The guy whose name was synonymous with eye-rolls and “hot but wooden” thinkpieces. Suddenly, he’s not just in the conversation; he’s rewriting the damn script.

And it’s not some pity nod. Critics are calling his turn as the Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein “a revelation that stitches together vulnerability and fury like Frankenstein’s own flesh.” Variety’s Clayton Davis pegged him as a top-five lock, whispering that Elordi’s performance “elevates the film from prestige horror to soul-shattering epic.” Netflix stock ticked up 2% that day—coincidence? Hell no. This isn’t just buzz; it’s a seismic shift. Frankenstein, del Toro’s long-gestating passion project that finally lumbered onto screens in a limited theatrical run on October 17 before devouring Netflix’s top spot on November 7, is being hailed as the “season destroyer” of 2026. With a $120 million budget that del Toro wielded like a mad scientist’s scalpel, the film has racked up 15 million global views in its first week, a Rotten Tomatoes score hovering at 92%, and whispers of double-digit Oscar noms. But at the epicenter? Elordi. The underdog who wasn’t supposed to bark, let alone bite.

If you’re one of the millions who binged Euphoria and swooned over his brooding Nate Jacobs, or caught a whiff of his chaotic charm in Saltburn‘s bathtub scene, you might think this was inevitable. Wrong. Dead wrong. Elordi’s path to this shortlist wasn’t paved with red carpets and nepotism callbacks. It was a blood-soaked trail of rejection, homelessness, and soul-crushing doubt that would have broken lesser men. We’re talking a 19-year-old kid ditching Brisbane for L.A. with $500 in his pocket, sleeping in his beat-up Toyota while auditioning for roles that laughed him out the door. We’re talking deleted high school selfies to appease rabid fans, tabloid vultures circling his every heartbreak, and a career-launching rom-com trilogy he now calls “ridiculous” enough to make him want to quit acting altogether. This isn’t a fairy tale. It’s a horror story with a monster who learned to love his scars.

Let’s rewind the reel to where it all began—not in some glossy soundstage, but in the sun-baked suburbs of Brisbane, Australia, in 1997. Jacob Elordi was born to John, a legal consultant with a no-nonsense edge, and Melissa, a marketing whiz who instilled in him a fierce work ethic. Growing up in a tight-knit Catholic family with two sisters, Jake (as his mates called him) was the lanky kid who towered over everyone at Marist College Ashgrove, a rugby-mad all-boys school. He played hooker on the field—ironic, given the hook he had to sink into Hollywood later—but off it, he was devouring David Lynch films and quoting The Godfather like scripture. “I always felt like an outsider,” Elordi confessed in a rare GQ sit-down last year. “Australia’s got this tall poppy syndrome—chop down anyone who stands too high. But I dreamed bigger than Brisbane could hold.”

That dream hit warp speed at 17 when he booked a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. No agent, no connections, just a backpack stuffed with headshots and a heart full of Sofia Coppola worship. He crashed on a mate’s couch in Echo Park, scraping by on odd jobs—barista gigs, construction shifts, even a stint walking dogs for Beverly Hills housewives who mistook him for “that tall surfer guy.” But the real gut-punch? The auditions. Endless cattle calls where casting directors sized up his 6’5″ frame and drawled, “Great look, kid. Ever thought about modeling?” Elordi laughs about it now, but back then, it stung like salt in a fresh wound. “I was invisible,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023. “Like, I’d pour my soul into a scene from There Will Be Blood, and they’d go, ‘Uh, can you do rom-com next?'”

By 18, things hit rock bottom. The couch-surfing dried up, and with rent astronomical even for a closet in Silver Lake, Elordi found himself living out of his car—a rusty 2005 Corolla that smelled like regret and instant noodles. Parked in Hollywood lots overnight, he’d wake at dawn to fogged windows and the gnawing fear that this was it. “I remember staring at the dashboard, thinking, ‘One more rejection, and I’m on the first flight home,'” he revealed in a tear-jerking Variety Actors on Actors chat with Andrew Garfield last month. Garfield, no stranger to his own Boyhood-era slogs, nodded solemnly: “You don’t just survive that. You forge something unbreakable.” Elordi nearly did pack it in—applying for uni back home, even calling his dad to confess defeat. But then, fate—or Netflix—knocked.

Enter The Kissing Booth. In 2017, director Vince Marcello was hunting for an “It Boy” to play Noah Flynn, the bad-boy dreamboat opposite Joey King’s Elle. Elordi’s tape—a smoldering selfie-video from his car’s front seat—caught fire. He landed the gig, sight unseen. The film dropped in 2018 and exploded: 40 million views in its first month, spawning two sequels and turning Elordi into a global crush. Fans shipped “Jolex” harder than Titanic’s Jack and Rose, plastering his abs across TikTok. But behind the beach kisses? Misery. Elordi, then 21, felt like a fraud. “Those movies are ridiculous,” he blasted in that infamous 2023 GQ profile. “I didn’t want to make them before I made them. They made me feel dead inside.” The backlash was swift—co-star Joey King called it “unfortunate,” fans accused him of biting the hand that fed him. But Elordi stood firm: “How is caring about your output pretentious? But not caring, and knowingly feeding people shit? That’s the real crime.”

The fallout nearly ended him. Overnight fame meant paparazzi staking out his non-existent apartment, forcing him to scrub his Instagram of innocent high school pics—mates mid-beer pong, awkward prom poses. “It was drastic,” he admitted on The Tonight Show last week, promoting Frankenstein. “One day I’m just a kid from Brisbane; the next, every photo’s dissected for ‘clues’ about my love life.” And oh, the love life—tabloids feasted on his flings like vultures. A rumored spark with Zendaya during Euphoria filming (denied, but dissected ad nauseam), a whirlwind with Kaia Gerber that crashed in 2021 amid “irreconcilable schedules,” and the on-again-off-again toxicity with Olivia Jade Giannulli, daughter of the Full House scandal queen. Sources whispered of gaslighting, cheating rumors, and Jade’s Paris move in August 2025 sealing their final split. “Relationships in this town? They’re pressure cookers,” Elordi sighed to Esquire earlier this year. “You survive one, you think you’re armored. Then the next one reminds you you’re just flesh.”

Flesh that was flayed by critics, too. Post-Kissing Booth, Elordi auditioned for prestige bait—The Batman, Dune cameos—but doors slammed. “Pretty boy syndrome,” one director allegedly sneered, per insider leaks. A savage Saltburn review early in production dubbed him “a plank of wood with cheekbones,” echoing the barbs that haunted his youth. He almost quit again after Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s Elvis biopic where he channeled the King with eerie precision—critics raved about his Southern drawl, but the Oscar snub stung. “I was like, ‘Maybe I’m not cut out for this,'” he told del Toro in a Netflix behind-the-scenes doc. That’s when the universe, in its twisted mercy, sent Guillermo.

Guillermo del Toro isn’t just a director; he’s a myth-maker, a bearded alchemist who’s turned fairy tales into fever dreams (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water). Frankenstein had haunted him since the ’90s—a shelved Universal project revived by Netflix in 2023 with a blank check. Del Toro needed a Creature not as Boris Karloff’s lumbering brute, but as Mary Shelley’s tragic poet: eloquent, aching, a mirror to humanity’s ugliest sins. Enter Elordi, via a cold read that left the room weeping. “Jacob walked in, all limbs and quiet fire,” del Toro recounted at Venice Film Festival in August. “I saw the loneliness in him—the same I’d felt chasing monsters my whole life. He’s not playing the Creature; he is it.”

Preparation was purgatory. Elordi dove into Butoh, the Japanese dance of the grotesque, contorting his body into “aching grace” for hours in a dimly lit studio. He studied his golden retriever, Luna, for innocence amid savagery: “There’s a real purity in how she moves, how she loves without question,” he shared in ELLE‘s November cover. But the real transformation? Makeup hell. Prosthetics wizard Mike Hill crafted 42 pieces—14 for head and neck alone—taking 10 to 11 hours per session. “I’d sit there, glued into this patchwork skin, wires snaking under scars, and think, ‘This is me now,'” Elordi said on Jimmy Fallon. Removal? 90 minutes of solvent torture, leaving his face raw. Del Toro shot Creature scenes at 36 frames per second, slowing gestures to hypnotic sloth (a wedding dress fluttering like moth wings) or speeding faces to frantic trembles. “You feel it in every beat,” del Toro tweeted post-release. “Jacob’s eyes—god, those eyes—hold galaxies of pain.”

On set, magic clashed with madness. Co-star Oscar Isaac, as the hubristic Victor, bonded with Elordi over late-night Godfather marathons, but tensions flared. One infamous day, a rain machine malfunction flooded the lab set, stranding Elordi—fully prostheticked—in icy muck for hours. “I was shivering, stitches pulling, screaming Shelley’s lines at the sky,” he laughed in a Still Watching Netflix interview. “Guillermo yelled, ‘More rage! You’re God’s abandoned child!’ And something cracked open.” Mia Goth, dual-casting as Elizabeth and the Bride, shared intimate scenes that blurred lines: “Jacob’s Creature isn’t a villain; he’s us, unmasked,” she told Vogue. Christoph Waltz, the oily patron fueling Victor’s folly, quipped, “Boy’s got the height of Karloff and the heart of Brando.” But beneath the camaraderie? Elordi’s demons whispered. Nights alone in his trailer, peeling off the makeup, he’d FaceTime his mum, voice breaking: “Am I enough?”

Frankenstein premiered at Venice to a 14-minute ovation, the crowd on its feet as Elordi’s Creature lumbered onstage, scars gleaming under spotlights. Critics erupted: The Guardian called it “del Toro’s masterpiece, with Elordi’s soul-baring turn as the emotional core.” IndieWire gushed, “From Kissing Booth punchline to Oscar firebrand—Hollywood’s redemption arc is here.” Box office? A modest $480K in limited release, but streaming? Carnage. It topped Netflix charts, spawning fan edits of Elordi’s monologues set to Radiohead. Oscar chatter ignited immediately—Gold Derby odds shifted, slotting him at 4-1 behind frontrunners like Stellan Skarsgård’s grizzled gravitas in Sentimental Value and Sean Penn’s battle-worn fire in One Battle After Another. But Elordi’s surge? Unstoppable. Paul Mescal’s tender Hamnet turn is poignant, Adam Sandler’s dramatic pivot in Jay Kelly is bold, but Elordi’s Creature? It’s primal poetry, a howl from the gut that voters can’t ignore.

Why the tears, though? Why are TikTok flooded with #JacobWept montages, fans ugly-crying over his journey? Because this isn’t just a win; it’s vindication. The kid who slept in his car, who deleted his youth to feed the fame machine, who endured “can’t act” barbs like lashes— he’s risen. “I survived by believing the work matters more than the noise,” Elordi told Awards Daily post-shortlist. “Guillermo saw the monster in me and said, ‘Let it sing.'” Del Toro, ever the poet, echoed: “Jacob’s Creature teaches us creation’s cost. He’s paid it in blood, sweat, and 11-hour sits. This Oscar? It’s his suture.”

As Frankenstein devours the season—poised for Best Picture, Director, and a makeup sweep—Elordi’s name etched beside Downey’s wry charisma and Culkin’s sharp bite feels like destiny’s cruel joke turned triumph. Hollywood, that glittering abattoir, is shocked because it should be. The pretty boy didn’t just storm the race; he stitched it anew. From Brisbane basements to Dolby Theatre dreams, Jacob Elordi’s story isn’t over—it’s alive, electric, unbreakable. And if tears are your reaction? Good. That’s the point. Monsters feel deepest.

But wait—there’s more to unpack. Let’s dive deeper into the film’s alchemy, because Frankenstein isn’t just a vehicle; it’s a vesper for del Toro’s obsessions. At 2.5 hours, it’s a sprawling gothic tapestry: Victor’s Alpine lab a wonder of practical effects (no CGI shortcuts here), the Creature’s birth a visceral squelch of lightning and sinew. Del Toro, drawing from Shelley’s 1818 fever, infuses queer undertones—Elordi’s Creature pines for connection like a closeted lover, his bond with Goth’s Elizabeth a forbidden flutter. “It’s about the other,” del Toro explained at Toronto. “The rejected body, the queer soul, the immigrant heart. Jacob embodied that—no mask needed.”

Elordi’s immersion was monastic. Pre-production: Months in isolation, journaling as the Creature, scrawling pleas in Frankenstein’s hand: “Why did I breathe? What doom awaits?” He shed 15 pounds for the role’s gaunt frame, then bulked into prosthetic bulk—his natural athleticism (that rugby-honed power) lending authenticity to rampages that feel both balletic and brutal. One scene, the Creature’s first mirror gaze, took 47 takes; Elordi’s raw sob on the 48th? Gold. “I saw myself—not the scars, but the boy who’d lost everything,” he shared in CinemaBlend. Influenced by his dog’s unwavering loyalty, he infused innocence: A tentative paw on Elizabeth’s glove, trembling with hope.

Off-set, the toll mounted. Post-Saltburn‘s “prudish” backlash (Elordi defended its grave romp as “visceral truth”), he grappled with typecasting’s ghost. “People see the jawline, forget the ache,” he vented to Harper’s Bazaar. Relationships crumbled under scrutiny—Jade’s scandal shadow, Gerber’s supermodel glare. A 2022 park picnic with Aussie model Bianca Finch hinted at healing, but pap snaps killed the vibe. By Priscilla, he’d sworn off dating: “Focus on the craft, or drown.” Frankenstein became salvation, del Toro a father figure. “Guillermo’s sets are churches,” Elordi said. “No judgment, just creation.”

Release night? Catharsis. Streaming at midnight, Elordi watched from a Brisbane hotel—home for mum’s birthday—phone exploding. 10 million hours viewed in 24 hours. Tweets poured: “Elordi’s Creature broke me #OscarForJacob.” Critics concurred: NY Times‘ Manohla Dargis deemed it “a performance of lacerating beauty, Elordi’s frame a canvas for del Toro’s heart.” Predictions swirled—ScreenRant slots him fourth, but surging past Sandler. Why? Relatability. In a year of AI gloss and franchise fatigue, Elordi’s rawness resonates. Downey’s polish is beloved, Culkin’s snark iconic, but Elordi’s fury? It’s ours—the rage of the overlooked.

The “season destroyer” tag? Apt. Frankenstein torpedoes competitors: Sentimental Value‘s sentimentality pales against its spectacle; Hamnet‘s intimacy shrinks beside its scope. Netflix’s theatrical ploy—three weeks in 1,000 screens—secured eligibility, but it’s the soul that seals it. Elordi’s shortlist slot, announced December 3, crashed Academy servers. Agents scrambled; Spielberg texted congrats. Yet Elordi? Grounded. “This isn’t the end,” he posted on Insta, Luna photobombed. “It’s the stitch that holds.”

So, Hollywood, wipe your shock. Jacob Elordi’s not storming—he’s awakening. From car-sleeping specter to Oscar specter, his journey’s a reminder: Monsters aren’t born; they’re forged in the dark. And this one’s just getting started. Grab tissues. The full roar’s coming.