The rise of The Saltburn Superhunk: He was cast as Elvis after every woman in a restaurant turned to gaze at him. Now, as 6ft5in Jacob Elordi sets hearts racing in one of the year's most feted films

Movie director Sofia Coppola had yet to cast the key role of Elvis Presley in her eagerly anticipated film Priscilla when a young Australian called Jacob Elordi walked through the door of a Los Angeles restaurant.

He was there for an initial chat with the award-winning director but Coppola couldn’t help but notice how his 6ft 5in-frame, razor-sharp bone structure and rippling physique had grabbed the attention of nearly every female in the vicinity.

‘There were some girls there – and you could just feel them all turn to him. I mean, he’s striking – so tall,’ Sofia recalled recently. ‘He just has a charisma; he has an effect on women that I imagine was similar to Elvis.’

Here, she thought, was her Elvis. Fast forward a year and it’s clear Coppola’s directorial instinct paid off: Elordi’s turn as the troubled singer in the biopic chronicling the courtship and marriage of Elvis and the former Priscilla Wagner has won plaudits from cinemagoers and critics.

Many of the latter have hailed the actor’s ‘layered’ and ‘nuanced’ performance.

Jacob Elordi is rumored to have dated fellow actor Zendaya from August 2019 until early 2020 but was never confirmed

Jacob Elordi is seen arriving at the Valentino Spring/Summer 2024 fashion show during the Milan Fashion Week

Nor is it the only critically acclaimed role he has undertaken recently, for the 26-year-old has also been feted for his depiction of the dashing aristocrat Felix Catton in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn.

Not bad for a young man who was practically unknown this time last year, save for the legion of young female fans who have been goggling over him in a series of tween dramas. 7

Now Elordi has been nominated for the EE Rising Star prize at this year’s Baftas – the only male in the race, alongside four women, among them Bridgerton actress Phoebe Dynevor.

It marks the climax 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 notched up a roster of stunningly beautiful and famous exes alongside a current girlfriend who comes with a tantalising whiff of scandal.

There is no disputing he looks the part of a Hollywood idol: his height, tanned skin, piercing eyes and general presence have led Coppola to liken him to legends such as Montgomery Clift and Paul Newman. She has mused about his ‘supermasculine actor quality’.

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

‘I was super-nervous about telling people my height,’ he recalled. ‘I used to try and pass for 6ft 2in or 6ft 3in, but I’m actually 6ft 5in.’

Born in 1997 in Brisbane in Australia, Elordi comes from a close-knit family and admits that, as the youngest of four children – with three elder sisters – he was doted on by his parents and siblings. ‘I was definitely spoiled, and I’m still spoiled,’ he has said.

His father John had emigrated to Queensland from his native Basque region in Spain with just £5 in his pocket, going on to build a career as a housepainter.

Elordi has described his father as the ‘totem of the kind of man that I would like to be’, crediting him with his dedicated work ethic.

He is equally devoted to his Australian stay-at-home mum Melissa, calling her ‘the most present, loving, just beautiful, angelic human being on this planet’ – recalling how she volunteered to work at his school canteen so she could spend time with her son while he was eating his lunch.

Elordi caught the acting bug early, and by 2017, not yet 20, he garnered his first taste of the spotlight when he played an extra in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, taking the uncredited role of a Saint Martin’s Marine.

He went on to get his first credited role in the 2018 Australian film Swinging Safari in a cast featuring popular Australians Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue.

Later that year he got what is considered to be his big break, the role of Noah in The Kissing Booth – the first of three Netflix movies which follow a quirky, late-blooming teenager girl’s budding romance with high school bad boy Noah (played by Elordi) and the way it puts her lifelong friendship with Noah’s younger brother in jeopardy.

Based on the novel by Welsh author Beth Reekles, the first film was panned by critics but the fans loved it and the eventual trilogy was viewed as a huge commercial success by Netflix.

Elordi seems to share detractors’ views, telling an interviewer: ‘Those movies are ridiculous. They’re not universal. They’re an escape.’ Even so, 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.

Joey King (Left) played Elordi’s love interest, Elle, and their relationship soon spilled into real life

‘I thought he was very cute when we first met, but it started as a friendship,’ King revealed in an interview in 2018. ‘It was such an interesting experience meeting your boyfriend on-set because you spend so much time together and become so close so fast. We were spending 17 hours a day together.’

Great – until it wasn’t. In an awkward twist, the couple split up before filming the second in the series, which meant they had to play a couple on screen having separated in real life.

After the movie 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 just 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 travails of Rue Bennett (played by US actress and singer Zendaya), a troubled teenage drug addict who struggles to handle life in the fictional town of East Highland, California after a stint in rehab.

That throw of the dice proved to be crucial: Elordi landed the role of Nate Jacobs, a star football player prone to angry outbursts to mask his sexual insecurities.

Elordi soon started a year-long relationship with Zendaya and at the end of 2019 she flew to Australia to spend Thanksgiving with Elordi’s parents.

It wasn’t to last. By 2020, Elordi had been linked with Kaia Gerber, the model daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford.

While the young couple conducted their romance largely out of the spotlight, they released a photograph on Instagram in which they posed 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, having a safe, steady relationship like that, has opened my eyes to the possibilities of love and what it feels like to love without conditions.’

Alas, that relationship didn’t last either – by November 2021 the couple had split, with Kaia going on to date Austin Butler – another ‘Elvis’ as it happens: he also took the role of the singer in Baz Luhrmann’s eponymous 2022 musical biopic.

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

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

The two have refused to confirm or discuss their relationship, though they have been pictured together several times and last summer holidayed with Giannulli’s parents, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli and his actress wife Lori Loughlin – best known for her role in the popular US 1980s sitcom Full House.

One topic unlikely to be discussed around the family dinner table is how Giannulli’s parents were named in an FBI investigation into illegal payments that had been made to influence undergraduate admissions at several top American 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 charges against them, although they then switched their pleas to guilty.

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

Olivia Jade, who had started her first year at USC the year before, majoring in communications, was on holiday in the Bahamas when the scandal broke, but immediately dropped out of her course, later speaking of the shame she felt over the revelations.

Jacob and then girlfriend Kaia Gerber dress up as Elvis and Priscilla for Halloween in 2020

‘I never went back. I was too embarrassed. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, clearly,’ she said.

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

Her relationship with Elordi will likely have done her no harm, for whether or not her beau gets to lift the coveted Rising Star trophy, his future looks dazzling.

He has just finished filming Oh Canada, another eagerly anticipated big screen release, which delves into the life of a tormented writer who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft and is now 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 subsequently played in later life by Richard Gere.

At 5ft 10in, Gere does not share the height of his younger incarnation but Schrader said he thinks the two men otherwise have much in common.

‘He has a lot of the same qualities as Richard,’ he said. ‘I could have made America Gigolo 40 years ago with Jacob.

‘He is a throwback, in a way, to a kind of old-time movie star.’

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