Film director Sofia Coppola had not yet cast the key role of Elvis Presley in her highly anticipated film Priscilla when a young Australian named Jacob Elordi walked through the door of a Los Angeles restaurant.
He was there for an initial interview with the award-winning director, but Coppola couldn't help but notice how his 6-foot-3 frame, razor-sharp bone structure and shapely physique had attracted the attention of almost every woman in the vicinity .
“There were a few girls there – and you could just feel them all turning to him.” “I mean, he's impressive – so tall,” Sofia recently recalled. “He just has charisma; “He has an effect on women that I think is similar to Elvis.”
Here, she thought, was her Elvis. A year later, it's clear that Coppola's directorial instincts have paid off: Elordi's turn as a troubled singer in the biopic about the love and marriage of Elvis and the former Priscilla Wagner has received widespread praise from both moviegoers and critics.
Many of them praised the actor's “multi-layered” and “nuanced” performance.
Jacob Elordi was rumored to be dating fellow actor Zendaya from August 2019 to early 2020, although this was never confirmed
Jacob Elordi is seen at the Valentino Spring/Summer 2024 fashion show during Milan Fashion Week
It's not the only critically acclaimed role he's taken on recently, as the 26-year-old was also celebrated for his portrayal of dashing aristocrat Felix Catton in Emerald Fennell's Saltburn.
Not bad for a young man who was virtually unknown this time last year, aside from the legion of young female fans who've been ogling him in a number of tween dramas. 7
Now Elordi has been nominated for the EE Rising Star award at this year's Baftas – the only man in the running, alongside four women including Bridgerton actress Phoebe Dynevor.
It marks the culmination of an extraordinary year for Elordi, who has been dubbed Hollywood's hottest new star – a title he seems well-equipped for, as he already has a list of breathtakingly beautiful in addition to a current girlfriend who goes along with an alluring partner and famous ex-girlfriends has brought together a touch of scandal.
There's no doubt that he looks like a Hollywood idol: his height, tanned skin, piercing eyes and overall presence have led Coppola to compare him to legends like Montgomery Clift and Paul Newman. She reflected on his “supermasculine acting skills.”
Ironically, however, Elordi once believed that his beanpole stature could hinder his dream of becoming an actor, revealing in a 2020 interview that some agents had told him as a teenager that he was too tall for fame.
“I was very afraid to tell people my size,” he remembers. “I used to try to pass as 6ft 2in or 6ft 3in, but in reality I’m 6ft 5in.”
Born in Brisbane, Australia in 1997, Elordi comes from a close-knit family and admits that as the youngest of four children – with three older sisters – he was adored by his parents and siblings. “I was definitely spoiled, and I still am spoiled,” he said.
His father John had emigrated to Queensland from his native Basque Country in Spain with just £5 in his pocket and built a career as a house painter.
Elordi has described his father as a “totem of the man I would like to be” and credited him with his dedicated work ethic.
He is equally devoted to his Australian housewife Melissa, calling her “the most present, loving, simply beautiful, angelic human being on the planet” – and recalls how she volunteered to work in his school cafeteria so they could hang out could with her son while he ate his lunch.
Elordi caught the acting bug at an early age, and in 2017, not yet 20 years old, he got his first taste of the spotlight when he played an extra in the uncredited role of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales of a Saint Martin Marine took over.
He landed his first role in the 2018 Australian film Swinging Safari in a cast with popular Australians Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue.
Later that year, he landed his big break, the role of Noah in “The Kissing Booth” – the first of three Netflix films that follow the budding romance of a quirky, late-blooming teenage girl with high school villain Noah ( played by Elordi) and the way it jeopardizes her lifelong friendship with Noah's younger brother.
The first film, based on the novel by Welsh author Beth Reekles, was panned by critics, but fans loved it and the eventual trilogy was considered a huge commercial success by Netflix.
Elordi seems to share the critics' views, telling an interviewer: “These films are ridiculous.” They are not universal. They are an escape.' Still, it wasn't all bad: Elordi met the first of his many famous girlfriends on set.
Joey King played Elordi's lover Elle, and their relationship soon expanded into real life.
Joey King (left) played Elordi's lover Elle, and their relationship soon expanded into real life
“I thought he was very sweet when we first met, but it started a friendship,” King revealed in a 2018 interview. “It was such an interesting experience meeting your boyfriend on set because you spend so much time together and you fall in love.” so close, so quickly. “We spent 17 hours a day together.”
Great – until it wasn’t. In an awkward twist, the couple split up before the second part of the series was filmed, meaning they had to play a couple on screen who had split up in real life.
After the film ended, Elordi moved from Australia to Los Angeles in a leap of faith, only to struggle for work there.
When he was reduced to living in a car and only had a few hundred dollars in his account, he decided to return to Australia if his next audition didn't work out.
This audition was for a role in the American teen drama series Euphoria.
Now one of HBO's most popular productions, it follows the high school struggles of Rue Bennett (played by US actress and singer Zendaya), a troubled drug-addicted teenager who escapes after a stay in the fictional town of East Highland California is having difficulty coping with life in rehab.
That roll of the dice proved decisive: Elordi landed the role of Nate Jacobs, a star football player prone to temper tantrums to hide his sexual insecurities.
Elordi soon began a year-long relationship with Zendaya and in late 2019 she flew to Australia to spend Thanksgiving with Elordi's parents.
It wasn't meant to last. Until 2020, Elordi was linked to Kaia Gerber, the model daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford.
While the young couple continued their romance largely out of the spotlight, they posted a photo on Instagram posing in Halloween costumes.
And in 2021, Gerber opened up about her relationship to American Vogue, saying, “Being able to be with someone that I trust, where we don't want anything from each other, having a safe, stable relationship like this was eye-opening.” .” about the possibilities of love and what it feels like to love unconditionally.'
Unfortunately, this relationship didn't last long either – the couple separated in November 2021 and Kaia went out with Austin Butler – another “Elvis” by the way: He also took on the role of the singer in Baz Luhrmann's musical biography of the same name from 2022.
The grass didn't grow under Elordi's feet either.
In December 2021, a month after his split from Kaia, he was photographed grabbing coffee in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles with 24-year-old influencer and YouTuber Olivia Jade Giannulli.
The two have refused to confirm or discuss their relationship, despite being pictured together several times and last summer with Giannulli's parents, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli and his actress wife Lori Loughlin – best known for her role in the popular US film -Sitcom Full from the 1980s is known – Holidays went home.
One topic unlikely to be discussed at the family table is how Giannulli's parents were named in an FBI investigation into illegal payments made to influence student admissions to several leading American universities.
The Giannullis had paid £400,000 to get Olivia Jade and her younger sister into the University of Southern California (USC).
A month after the revelations, they pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, but then changed their plea to guilty.
Lori was sentenced to two months in prison, Mossimo to five months and the pair were fined a total of £315,000.
Olivia Jade, who had started her freshman year at USC the year before as a communications major, was on vacation in the Bahamas when the scandal broke, but immediately dropped out of her studies and later spoke about the shame she felt over the revelations felt.
Jacob and his then-girlfriend Kaia Gerber dressed up as Elvis and Priscilla for Halloween 2020
“I never went back. I was too embarrassed. “I wasn’t supposed to be there,” she said.
She was already influential on social media but lost a number of lucrative brand sponsorships, although she has since bounced back with 1.2 million followers on Instagram and 1.8 million subscribers to her YouTube beauty channel.
Her relationship with Elordi probably won't have hurt her, because regardless of whether her boyfriend lifts the coveted Rising Star trophy or not, his future looks bright.
He just finished filming Oh Canada, another highly anticipated feature film that follows the life of a tormented writer who fled to Canada to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War and now finds himself on the brink of death .
Written and directed by Paul Schrader – who wrote the screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and directed the 1980 thriller American Gigolo – Elordi appears as a younger version of a character played by Richard Gere later in life.
At 5-foot-7, Gere isn't as tall as his younger incarnation, but Schrader said he thinks the two men otherwise have a lot in common.
“He has many of the same qualities as Richard,” he said. “I could have done America Gigolo with Jacob 40 years ago.”
“In a way, he’s a throwback to a kind of movie star from the old days.”
An old movie star for the modern age and the star none of us knew we were waiting for.