Jacob Elordi found spending 10 hours in the make-up chair for Frankenstein "the greatest blessing".
The 28-year-old actor portrayed Victor Frankenstein's (Oscar Isaac) creation the Creature in Guillermo Del Toro's adaptation of the classic horror tale and though it took a lot of preparation for him to get ready for a day's filming, he was grateful for it because he had so much time to work on the screenplay and his ideas for the character.
Speaking during The Hollywood Reporter's Actors Roundtable, he said: "It gave me the freedom to be completely expressive.
"There were things that I could do in that make-up that I’d never get away with in a regular film.
"When I spoke to Guillermo the first time, he said, 'This isn’t a prosthetics process. It’s going to be the sacrament. It needs to be holy. It’s, "The Father, Son and Holy Spirit", and then you step into the church. The time that it takes is what you need to become this thing that’s other.'
"When the Creature is newborn, from head to toe was about 10 hours. When he has clothes on, it was five hours.
"If you could have 10 hours every day to get ready for the day, it would be the greatest blessing. You learn the screenplay inside out, and then you can put it down and spend another three hours thinking about it, and then not thinking about it.
"And then all of a sudden, you look up in the mirror and you are gone."
Jacob recalled being thrown into the deep end when he had to shoot the film's emotional climax much earlier than he expected, but he was ultimately relieved because he didn't get the time to "freak out".
He said: "The final scene of Frankenstein is meant to be full, operatic emotion, forgiving the father. I thought we’d shoot it at the end.
"But much earlier than that, Guillermo said, 'Tomorrow we’re going to do the forgiveness scene. The set is ready.'
"This was going to be the first time I’d acted with Oscar. I hadn’t figured out how to emote as this thing. And I didn’t know what the voice was yet.
"I was like, 'If I think about this, I’m not going to go to work tomorrow; I’m going to be in the hospital or something. I’m going to freak out.'
"So I just didn’t think about it, and then I just did it. If I’d obsessed over it for the next eight weeks, it would have been a nightmare."
Fellow actor Wagner Moura noted: "Sometimes I feel like we don’t need the amount of preparation that we all think we need.
"Sometimes, just show up and do it!
Jacob reflected: "I think it’s because it’s an intangible thing, whatever it is that we do, so you have to pretend that there is a business structure to it. Like, ''I did this from nine to three, so I must be good to go.' "
