Jacob Elordi has revealed he spent intense hours in the make-up chair during filming Frankenstein came with an unexpected benefit.
The 28-year-old actor stars as the creature opposite Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming adaptation of the classic horror story.
While speaking on The Hollywood Reporter’s Actors RoundtableElordi admitted that preparing for each day of filming required a significant time commitment.
Rather than seeing the lengthy process as a burden, Elordi explained that the extensive preparation gave him a rare, uninterrupted time to fully immerse himself in the script and shape his ideas for the character.
“It gave me the freedom to be fully expressive,” he said.
“There were things I could do in that makeup that I could never get away with in a regular movie.”
Elordi also talked about how del Toro shaped the prosthetic process from their very first conversation.
“When I first spoke to Guillermo, he said, ‘This is not a prosthetic process. It becomes the sacrament. It has to be holy. It is ‘The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,’ and then you step into the church. The time it takes is what you need to become this thing that is different.'”
The actor explained how demanding the transformation was, noting that when the creature first appears, applying the full makeup took about 10 hours.
“When the creature was newborn, it took about 10 hours from head to toe. When he had clothes on, it took five hours,” Elordi said.
Despite the intensity, he described the experience as a creative gift.
“If you had ten hours every day to prepare for the day, that would be the biggest blessing,” he explained. “You learn the scenario inside out, and then you can put it down and think about it for another three hours and then not think about it again.”
“And then suddenly you look in the mirror and you’re gone,” he concluded.
