Jacob Elordi.Photo: Leon Bennett/WireImage
Jacob Elordiis opening up about his early career struggles.
In an interview withGQpublished Monday, theEuphoriaactor, 25, broke down what his life was like after the release of his first big project, Netflix’sThe Kissing Booth.
After the movie wrapped filming in 2017, the Australian actor moved to L.A. and crashed on a friend’s couch in the San Fernando Valley for a couple of weeks, the outlet reported. Besides utilizing their sofa, Elordi would often also sleep in his 2004 Mitsubishi on Mulholland Drive.
“I wasn’t booking jobs,” he told the outlet. “I think I had — I don’t know, $400 or $800 left in my bank account — andEuphoriawas my last audition before I went home for a little while to make some money and recuperate.”
Luckily for the Brisbane native, he soon booked the role of Nate Jacobs in the HBO series. But, when the time came to shoot the pilot, Elordi was still relying on his car. “My car was like a hoarder’s, stacked with boxes and coat hangers and things,” he told the outlet.
After noticing the behavior, a producer on the show got him a room at the Standard in West Hollywood. “I got really lucky,” he said toGQ. “Which is just an L.A. story, you know?”
Jeff Kravitz/Getty
Elsewhere during the interview, Elordi opened up about hischildhood bullies. At the age of 12, he was cast as Oberon, King of the Faeries, in a production of William Shakespeare’sA Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the time, young Elordi took pride in embodying the gender-bending character.
“From the moment I did a play I was called gay at school,” Elordi toldGQin the magazine’s August cover story.
“But I had this abundance of confidence in myself. Because I could do both: I was quite good at sport and I think I was quite good at theater,” he said. “I felt like I was above it, or it made me feel older. It made me feel wiser.”
Elordi added that he actually doubled down on his schoolmates' taunts after they bullied him. “When they said I was gay, I remember leaning into the makeup,” he said. “I was like, if I’m going to be the King of the Fairies, I’m going to be the f—ing hottest King of the Fairies you’ve ever seen.”
He continued, “I started welcoming those kinds of characters. I started welcoming the femininity. I started speaking with my hands. I started really playing the thespian.”
“I never was worried that my peers would think that I was less than a man,” Elordi noted. “And also, there’s the classic thing of I was doing plays with girl schools. I’m spending my weekends with the most beautiful women from the school next-door, reading the most romantic words ever written.”
“I enjoyed playing the actor,” he said. “I stepped away from beer culture and from sport culture, and I was like, well, if you think this is gay, I’m going to be who I am when I was your friend, which is this hetero guy, but I’m going to play the arts.”
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“I’m going to show you that’s bulls—,” Elordi said of his personal mission. “I could never understand, how could you label anything, ever? How could you label sport as masculine? How does your sexuality inform your prowess as an athlete, or your prowess as a performer?”
The Kissing Boothsaga and HBO’sEuphoriaare both streaming now.
source: people.com
