When it came to playing Frankenstein’s monster in Guillermo del Toro’s new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s iconic text, Jacob Elordi had no shortage of previous cinematic portrayals to draw on. From Boris Karloff to Christopher Lee to Peter Boyle to Robert de Niro, the creature has been brought to the screen countless times in a variety of iconic ways.
But rather than looking solely at his acting predecessors, the Saltburn star also found inspiration for his role from another, rather more unexpected, source: his golden retriever, Layla.
“I mean, like a child, she doesn’t speak, obviously, so everything that she does physically is to get what she needs or to show how she feels,” he explained in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com.
“So she’s very creature-like in the way that she operates in the world. I suppose she’s also incredibly sensitive. So there was a lot of that in her – I see the whole world in my dog’s eyes.”
Of course, Layla wasn’t the only source that came in handy to Elordi while crafting the physicality of his performance, and he admitted that his wade-range of influences stretched as far as… almost every experience he’s ever had.
“I mean, every movie I’ve ever seen, every conversation I’ve ever had, every time I’ve broken a bone, every little breakdown, every moment of ecstatic joy that I couldn’t control, everything,” he said.
“It was very much a big part of myself, I think, in the physicality of the creature. It’s strange because it’s not human, but it almost feels more human than me walking around like a guy!”
Elordi is joined in the cast by Oscar Isaac as the titular scientist, while there are also key roles for the likes of Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz and David Bradley.
The film has received some very positive reviews since premiering at this year’s Venice Film Festival, and in our own five-star write-up we heaped praise on Elordi’s performance – writing that the Australian actor “truly shows his dexterity in a performance of few words but grand and sometimes heartbreaking gestures.”
We also wrote that the film was “the accumulation of three-and-a-half decades of filmmaking knowledge” on the part of Del Toro, and that it all adds up to “a tragic tale told in a captivating manner.”
Frankenstein is now showing in limited cinemas and will arrive on Netflix on 7th November 2025.
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