It is always cool to see Basque names on the big screen. Whenever we sit through the credits of a movie, I tend to scan the names to see if any Basque names pop out to me. So, it’s even cooler when the Basque name is also the star of the movie. Jacob Elordi has been getting a lot of buzz and his career has really taken off in the last couple of years. The son of a Basque immigrant, Elordi grew up in Australia before making his way to Hollywood. His most recent film is Frankenstein, directed by Guillermo del Toro, in which Elordi plays the creature.

Incidentally, I just saw Frankenstein and really enjoyed it.

• Jacob Nathaniel Elordi was born on June 26, 1997, in Brisbane, Australia. He comes from a working class family. His father John is a house painter and his mother Melissa is a stay-at-home mom and waitress. John was born in the Bizkaian province of Marikina-Xeimen while John’s father, Joaquin, was born in Ondarroa. Jacob has three older sisters.
• Joaquin had immigrated to Australia to escape Franco’s dictatorship. He originally worked in the sugar cane fields until he saved enough money to bring his mother and his son, John, to Australia. John was eight years old at the time.
• Elordi says that he was inspired to become an actor by Heath Ledger. He started acting in musicals at his school at the age of 12. He was interested in rugby until he hurt his back when he was 14, which pushed him from athletics to acting. It was when he was 15 and reading Waiting for Godot in drama class that he really decided acting was his passion. His father initially discouraged Jacob’s acting ambitions, saying that “acting is a one-in-a-million kind of situation.” Jacob replied by saying “Well, why can’t that one be me? Why can’t I be that one in a million?”
• Elordi’s first Hollywood role was as an extra in 2017’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. He started gaining fame in 2018 as part of Netflix’s The Kissing Booth. He was about to give up on his Hollywood dream – he had been sleeping in his car and on friends’ couches – when he was cast in HBO’s Euphoria.
• After that, his career began to take off. In 2023, he played Elvis Presley in Priscilla and starred in Saltburn, for which he received a BAFTA nomination for best supporting actor. Most recently, he starred as the titular monster in Guillermo del Toro‘s Frankenstein. His performance in this and other recent films has earned him praise. For Frankenstein, he spent 10 hours a day in make-up to complete his transformation.
• Elordi has made his pride in his Basque ancestry very clear. When a Wikipedia article about him listed his ancestry as Spanish, he said he wasn’t of Spanish but Basque descent, and his grandfather would strangle him if he heard that.

A full list of all of Buber’s Basque Facts of the Week can be found in the Archive.

Primary sources: Jacob Elordi Reveals What Kind of Dad He Wants to Be by Brahmjot Kaur, E News; Jacob Elordi, Wikipedia; Jacob Elordi, the Giant of Generation Z by Gerardo Elorriaga, Todo Alicante; Inside Jacob Elordi’s 10-Hour Transformation Into Frankenstein’s Creature by Emma Fraser, Elle