Jacob Elordi: The Gen Z King

There is a particular kind of momentum that only a few actors ever experience, the moment when talent, timing, and discipline converge. Jacob Elordi has arrived at that point. In Guillermo del Toro’s new interpretation of Frankenstein, the Australian actor transforms into the Creature, buried under layers of prosthetics yet still unmistakably magnetic. It takes a rare presence to command the screen opposite Oscar Isaac, and Elordi manages it effortlessly, even when almost unrecognizable.

At first glance, his composure at the recent fashion weeks in Paris and Milan might suggest calm. Sitting front row as an ambassador for Cartier and Bottega Veneta, he appeared every inch the modern icon. Yet beneath that quiet exterior lies a performer on the brink of his most significant year to date.

Elordi’s story began far from Hollywood. Raised in Brisbane, he was the tall, driven theater kid who dreamt of cinema long before he had access to it. At six foot five, with a sculptural presence, he was noticed early, landing The Kissing Booth in 2017, a commercial hit that catapulted him into global visibility. Yet fame, as it often does, came with ambivalence. Elordi has since admitted that the role left him questioning what kind of career he wanted to build.

That question found its answer in Euphoria. As Nate Jacobs, the brooding, volatile antihero of HBO’s defining teen drama, Elordi turned a morally fractured character into one of the most complex studies of modern masculinity on television. The role demanded intensity but also restraint, revealing an actor capable of depth far beyond expectation. It also established him as one of Gen Z’s most compelling on-screen figures, a performer as attuned to character psychology as to the aesthetics of performance.

Rather than chase franchise roles, Elordi leaned into collaboration with auteurs. In 2023, he embodied a domineering Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, a portrait of control and charisma that balanced allure with menace. That same year, in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, he gave us Felix, golden, privileged, yet tinged with a subtle self-awareness that made him more than an object of obsession. These choices placed him in the company of contemporaries like Timothée Chalamet and Barry Keoghan, actors who have redefined what it means to be a modern leading man, not larger than life but alive to contradiction.

Away from the set, Elordi’s approach is studied, almost ascetic. He reads philosophy and classic Hollywood biographies, speaks of long working days as joy, and seems uninterested in the distractions that fame invites. His relationship with YouTube creator Olivia Jade has been on and off, but his most enduring partnership appears to be with his craft.

Del Toro has called him “superhuman,” praising both his endurance and the empathy he brings to the role of the Creature, a being reimagined not as a monster but as an innocent caught in the machinery of human cruelty. Since its premiere in Venice, Frankenstein has generated early awards buzz, a sign that Elordi’s transformation may mark more than just a career milestone.

And the year ahead is crowded with promise. The final season of Euphoria, which Elordi has described as “clever and cinematic,” finally arrives this spring. He will then reunite with Emerald Fennell for Wuthering Heights opposite Margot Robbie, and join Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars with Margaret Qualley. Later, he takes on Cormac McCarthy’s Outer Dark, directed by Oscar winner László Nemes and co-starring Lily-Rose Depp.

Each project adds a layer to a portrait of an actor unafraid of complexity. Jacob Elordi’s ascent is not built on charm or hype but on the kind of conviction that lasts. Like the creature he now embodies, he carries within him both vulnerability and power, and that balance may be what propels him to the very top of his generation.