The Rise of The Saltburn Superhunk: He was cast as Elvis after every woman in a restaurant turned to look at him. Now, at 6 feet tall, Jacob Elordi sets pulses racing in one of the most celebrated films of the year

Film director Sofia Coppola had yet to portray the key role of Elvis Presley in her highly anticipated film Priscilla when a young Australian named Jacob Elordi walked through the door of a Los Angeles restaurant.

He was there for an initial interview with the award-winning director, but Coppola noticed how his 6-foot-4, razor-sharp bone structure and curvy physique had captured the attention of almost every woman in the area.

'There were a few girls there – and you could just feel them all turning towards him. I mean, he's striking, so tall,” Sofia recently recalled. “He just has charisma; he has an effect on women that, I think, is similar to Elvis's.”

Here, she thought, was her Elvis. A year later, it's clear that Coppola's directorial instincts have paid off: Elordi's turn as the troubled singer in the biopic about the courtship and marriage of Elvis and the former Priscilla Wagner has received rave reviews from moviegoers and critics.

Many of the latter have praised the actor's “layered” and “nuanced” performance.

It's not the only critically acclaimed role he's taken on recently either, with the 26-year-old also being praised for his portrayal of dashing aristocrat Felix Catton in Emerald Fennell's Saltburn.

Not bad for a young man who was virtually unknown this time last year, save for the legion of young female fans who watched him in a series of tween dramas. 7

Now Elordi has been nominated for the EE Rising Star award at this year's Baftas – the only man in the race, alongside four women, including Bridgerton actress Phoebe Dynevor.

It marks the culmination of an extraordinary year for Elordi, who has been dubbed Hollywood's hottest new star – a title for which he seems ideally equipped, having already amassed a roster of stunningly beautiful and famous exes alongside a current girlfriend who comes with a seductive hint of scandal.

There's no disputing that he looks like a Hollywood idol: his height, tanned skin, piercing eyes and general presence have led Coppola to compare him to legends like Montgomery Clift and Paul Newman. She's been thinking about his “super-masculine actor quality.”

Ironically, however, Elordi once believed that his tall stature could get in the way of his dream of becoming an actor, revealing in a 2020 interview that some agents had told him as a teenager that he was too tall for stardom.

“I was super nervous about telling people my height,” he recalls. “I used to try to pass for 6-foot-1 or 6-foot-1, but I'm actually 6-foot-4.”

Born in 1997 in Brisbane, Australia, Elordi comes from a close-knit family and admits that as the youngest of four children – with three older sisters – he was in love with his parents and siblings. “I was absolutely spoiled, and I still am,” he has said.

His father John had emigrated to Queensland from his native Basque Country in Spain with just £5 in his pocket, where he built a career as a house painter.

Elordi has described his father as the “totem of the kind of man I would like to be,” and credited him with his dedicated work ethic.

He is equally devoted to his Australian stay-at-home mother, Melissa, calling her “the most present, loving, just beautiful, angelic human being on this planet” – recalling how she volunteered to work in his school cafeteria, so she could spend time with her son while he ate his lunch.

Elordi caught the acting bug early, and in 2017, still in his early twenties, he got his first taste of the spotlight when he played an extra in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, in which he played the uncredited role of took on a Saint Martin's Marine.

He then landed his first credited role in the 2018 Australian film Swinging Safari in a cast that included popular Australians Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue.

Later that year, he landed what is considered his big break: the role of Noah in The Kissing Booth – the first of three Netflix films that follow a headstrong, late-blooming teenage girl's budding romance with high school bad boy Noah ( played by Elordi) and the way it jeopardizes her lifelong friendship with Noah's younger brother.

Based on the novel by Welsh writer Beth Reekles, the first film was panned by critics, but fans loved it and the final trilogy was deemed a huge commercial success by Netflix.

Elordi seems to share the opinion of the detractors, telling an interviewer: 'Those films are ridiculous. They are not universal. They are an escape.” Still, it wasn't all bad: Elordi met the first of his many famous girlfriends on set.

Joey King played Elordi's love interest, Elle, and their relationship soon spilled into real life.

“I thought he was really cute when we first met, but it started as a friendship,” King revealed in a 2018 interview. “It was such an interesting experience meeting your boyfriend on set because you spend so much time spending time together and so close so quickly. We spent 17 hours a day together.”

Great – until it wasn't. In an awkward twist, the pair split before filming the second in the series, meaning they had to play an on-screen couple after breaking up in real life.

After the film wrapped, in a leap of faith, Elordi moved from Australia to Los Angeles, only to struggle for work.

Reduced to living in a car and with only a few hundred dollars to his name, he decided that if his next audition didn't work out, he would return to Australia.

That audition was for a role in the American teen drama series Euphoria.

Now one of HBO's most popular productions, it follows the high school trials and tribulations of Rue Bennett (played by American actress and singer Zendaya), a troubled teenage drug addict struggling to cope with life in the fictional town of East Highland, California, after a period in rehabilitation.

That roll of the dice turned out to be crucial: Elordi got the role of Nate Jacobs, a star football player who is prone to outbursts of anger to mask his sexual insecurities.

Elordi soon began a yearlong relationship with Zendaya, and in late 2019 she flew to Australia to spend Thanksgiving with Elordi's parents.

It wouldn't last. In 2020, Elordi was linked to Kaia Gerber, the model daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford.

While the young couple conducted their romance largely out of the spotlight, they posted a photo to Instagram of them posing in Halloween costumes.

And in 2021, Gerber opened up to American Vogue about their relationship, saying, “Being able to be with someone I trust, where we don't want anything from each other, and having such a safe, committed relationship, has opened my eyes. to the possibilities of love and what it feels like to love without conditions.'

Unfortunately, that relationship didn't last either – by November 2021, the couple had split and Kaia was dating Austin Butler – another 'Elvis': he also played the role of the singer in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 musical biopic of the same name. .

The grass did not grow under Elordi's feet either.

In December 2021, a month after splitting from Kaia, he was photographed having coffee in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles with 24-year-old influencer and YouTuber Olivia Jade Giannulli.

The two have refused to confirm or discuss their relationship, although they have been photographed together several times and vacationed last summer with Giannulli's parents, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli and his actress wife Lori Loughlin — best known for her role in the popular American sitcom from the 80s. Full House.

One topic unlikely to be discussed at the family dinner table is how Giannulli's parents were named in an FBI investigation into illegal payments made to influence student admissions at several top U.S. universities.

The Giannullis had paid £400,000 to get Olivia Jade and her younger sister into the University of Southern California (USC).

A month after the revelations, they pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, although they subsequently changed their pleas to guilty.

Lori was sentenced to two months in prison, Mossimo to five months and the pair were fined a combined £315,000.

Olivia Jade, who had started her freshman year at USC the year before, majoring in communications, was on vacation in the Bahamas when the scandal broke, but immediately dropped out of her studies and later spoke of the shame she felt about the revelations.

'I never went back. I was too ashamed. “I clearly shouldn't have been there,” she said.

Already influential on social media, she lost a number of lucrative brand sponsorships, although she has since recovered, with 1.2 million followers on Instagram and 1.8 million subscribers to her YouTube beauty channel.

Her relationship with Elordi probably won't have done her any harm, because whether or not her boyfriend lifts the coveted Rising Star trophy, his future looks dazzling.

He just finished filming Oh Canada, another highly anticipated big-screen release that delves into the life of a troubled writer who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War and now finds himself on the brink of death.

Written and directed by Paul Schrader – who wrote the screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and directed the 1980 thriller American Gigolo – Elordi appears as a younger version of a character later played by Richard Gere late in life.

At 6-foot-1, Gere doesn't share the height of his younger incarnation, but Schrader said he thinks the two men otherwise have a lot in common.

“He has a lot of the same qualities as Richard,” he said. 'With Jacob I could have made America Gigolo 40 years ago.

“He's a throwback to a kind of old movie star in a way.”

An old movie star for the modern age and the star none of us knew we were waiting for.