{"id":292808,"date":"2026-02-11T18:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/292808\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T18:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:37:08","slug":"is-jacob-elordi-really-the-hottest-man-on-the-planet-six-things-you-need-to-know-jacob-elordi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/292808\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Jacob Elordi really the hottest man on the planet? Six things you need to know | Jacob Elordi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff. The 28-year-old Australian actor has scarcely been out of the headlines since his controversial casting<\/a> in Emerald Fennell\u2019s imminent adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Now, in the week of the film\u2019s release, he\u2019s being hailed<\/a> as \u201cthe hottest man on the planet\u201d, tipped as a future Oscar winner and household name. Not even mixed early reviews seem to be slowing the momentum.<\/p>\n

Truly, these heights must seem wuthering to the boy from Brisbane who fell in love with acting after being cast<\/a> as The Cat in The Hat. \u201cAs soon as I was singing and dancing with the big hat on, I knew that that was what I wanted to do,\u201d Elordi said last December. But who is he, and what\u2019s behind his rapid rise?<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a generation\u2019s go-to crush \u2026<\/p>\n

Heathcliff might be Elordi\u2019s highest-profile performance to date, but Gen Z has grown up with him on their screens and there\u2019s a case to be made he\u2019s their defining heart-throb. Elordi\u2019s breakout role was in Netflix\u2019s hugely popular Kissing Booth films, in which he played the teenage protagonist\u2019s respectful older love interest Noah Flynn between 2018 and 2021. At the same time, Elordi starred in HBO\u2019s edgy, sex-and-drugs teen drama Euphoria as toxic jock Nate Jacobs. The contrasting roles not only showcased Elordi\u2019s range, but set him up to be a generational crush whether your tastes ran to good guys or bad boys. He is also, famously, 6ft 5in.<\/p>\n

\u2026 but also a serious actor<\/p>\n

Like Robert Pattinson with Twilight, Elordi has distanced himself from his breakout franchise, panning<\/a> The Kissing Booth films as \u201cridiculous \u2026 [and] not universal\u201d, while claiming he \u201cdidn\u2019t want to make\u201d them. (Elordi\u2019s co-star \u2013 and former girlfriend \u2013 Joey King said his comments were \u201cunfortunate\u201d.) Again, like Pattinson, Elordi sought to shake off his teen pin-up image with dark, challenging roles, playing a serial killer in 2023\u2019s He Went That Way and a murdered piano teacher in 2022\u2019s erotic thriller Deep Water. Critics finally took note after Elordi was cast as Elvis in Sofia Coppola\u2019s Priscilla. Coppola said<\/a> Elordi and Elvis had a similar \u201ceffect on women\u201d: \u201cI mean, he\u2019s striking \u2013 so tall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teen pin-up \u2026 Elordi as Noah Flynn in The Kissing Booth 2. Photograph: Marcos Cruz\/NetflixHe\u2019s not just tall. He can also read<\/p>\n

Elordi\u2019s last big role was playing Frankenstein\u2019s monster in Guillermo del Toro\u2019s 2025 film for Netflix \u2013 suggesting he\u2019s still battling against the perception of him as really, really good-looking. Good luck, Jacob! Elordi\u2019s appeal is not just that he\u2019s tall, though that cannot be underestimated. He\u2019s also deep, as evinced by his frequent name-checking of books. In an educational interview with Bustle<\/a> in 2024, Elordi said he was an \u201cenormous Kerouac fan\u201d, a \u201chuge Sartre fan\u201d, that reading The Odyssey was a \u201cmassive joy\u201d and he loved \u201cShakespeare more than anything\u201d. Donna Tartt also got a look-in, with Elordi declaring of The Secret History: \u201cI believe it to be her best work.\u201d In the same interview, \u201ca bespectacled\u201d Elordi admitted to being \u201ca Moleskine guy\u201d and keeping a notebook for every character he played. He was also at work on some paintings, though he demurred from showing or even describing them to the interviewer: \u201cI worry I might jeopardise what I get out of them.\u201d Paparazzi pictures of Elordi browsing airport bookshops \u2013 and, once, carrying a paperback in the lower pocket of his cargo pants \u2013 have sent social media into a frenzy. (\u201cI am going feral,\u201d commented<\/a> one X user.) If you were being churlish, you could infer that Elordi is the archetypal \u201cperformative male\u201d \u2013 an archetype widely mocked on social media for their pretentious cultural signalling \u2013 but it seems being really, really good-looking gives you a pass.<\/p>\n

\u2026 and he\u2019s Australian!<\/p>\n

Also central to Elordi\u2019s appeal is that he is not American, having been born in Brisbane and grown up between there and Melbourne. As such, he is a breath of fresh air in Hollywood. Elordi himself has stressed the cultural differences. \u201cIf Australians are like freshwater fish, Americans are saltwater fish,\u201d he told GQ in 2023<\/a>. \u201cIt kind of looks the same. The water is water, you\u2019re swimming around, but you can\u2019t breathe.\u201d He gave the example of ordering a coffee, \u201clike a standoff\u201d in Los Angeles compared to the \u201csacred\u201d, easy \u201cmateship\u201d of Australia. That\u2019s not to say it\u2019s always been smooth sailing down under. \u201cFrom the moment I did a play I was called gay at school,\u201d Elordi said in a different interview.<\/a> He rose above it, he added. \u201cI was never worried that my peers would think I was less than a man \u2026 I\u2019m spending my weekends with the most beautiful women from the school next door, reading the most romantic words ever written.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elordi, bottom left, with Richard E Grant, Archie Madekwe, Barry Keoghan, Rosamund Pike and Alison Oliver in Saltburn (2023). Photograph: BFA\/AlamyHe has a complicated relationship with fame<\/p>\n

As much as Elordi has striven to be known for his work and love of literature, he hasn\u2019t been able to dodge the shabby world of celebrity entirely. In the past he\u2019s been romantically linked to his Euphoria co-star Zendaya, Cindy Crawford\u2019s model daughter Kaia Gerber and Olivia Jade, the YouTuber who was infamously involved in the 2019 US college admissions scandal<\/a>. The scrutiny of his personal life and \u201cnew-world version of fame \u2026 can pain Elordi,\u201d as the GQ interviewer put it. Elordi earned two Bafta nominations for his star-making turn as Felix, a young aristocrat, in Fennell\u2019s 2023 film Saltburn, but his performance was overshadowed by a scene in which Barry Keoghan\u2019s character lustfully drinks Felix\u2019s bathwater. The online furore inspired bootleg merchandise including \u201cJacob Elordi\u2019s bathwater\u201d and Lush\u2019s \u201csalty, milky\u201d bath bomb. Elordi laughed it off on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, but was later involved in an \u201cincident\u201d with an Australian radio producer who filmed himself asking Elordi for his bathwater. When the man refused to delete the footage, Elordi allegedly pushed him against the wall and grabbed his throat. Police were reported<\/a> to be investigating the incident in February 2024, but nothing\u2019s come of it since.<\/p>\n

Now he\u2019s Heathcliff<\/p>\n

Given the scrutiny he received after Saltburn, Elordi has admitted to having second thoughts about returning to Fennell for Wuthering Heights. \u201cSaltburn grew into this thing I didn\u2019t really plan for,\u201d he told Vogue Australia<\/a>. \u201cThere is this feeling of having to swing for the fences again.\u201d By all accounts, Wuthering Heights only dials up the social media bait and over-the-top eroticism, with the first half of the film described<\/a> as \u201cessentially 60 minutes of foreplay\u201d. His co-star and fellow Australian Margot Robbie has certainly been keen to emphasise Elordi as a draw, describing the screening she threw for her friends as \u201cthe most unhinged experience\u201d of her life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dark and moody \u2026 Elordi as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.
Photograph: AP<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty women were like frothing at the mouth,\u201d she told<\/a> <\/a>to Jimmy Kimmel. \u201cThey were like rabid dogs \u2026 when Jacob came on screen, I think it registered on the Richter scale; they screamed so loud.\u201d Later pressed for his response to this anecdote, Elordi hedged<\/a> (\u201cI don\u2019t know. What do you say to that?\u201d) before eventually allowing that Robbie and her friends were \u201cintense\u201d. Elordi was a controversial choice for Heathcliff, not least because the character is stated in Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel to have dark skin. Fennell defended her casting by saying<\/a> that Elordi \u201clooked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read\u201d. But even Elordi, it seems, was not immediately convinced. He told Vogue Australia that, for the first three weeks of making the film, he felt \u201cthe greatest amount of doubt\u201d he had experienced thus far in his career. \u201cIt was the first time I\u2019d been like, \u2018I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m good enough\u2019.\u201d His breakthrough came when he realised that he was holding on to the character \u201cso tightly\u201d, Elordi continued. \u201cLike, it\u2019s Heathcliff. It has to be Heathcliff.\u201d Well, sure. The question is, will audiences let him in?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacob Elordi is Heathcliff. The 28-year-old Australian actor has scarcely been out of the headlines since his controversial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":{"0":"post-292808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}