Aussie king Jacob Elordi has opened up about the freak sporting injury that unexpectedly set him on the path to stardom.
In a roundtable interview for The Hollywood Reporter, the 28-year-old Saltburn actor revealed he was just 16 when his promising rugby journey came to a sudden halt after he broke his back during a heavy tackle in a school match. The serious injury forced Elordi to step away from the sport he had long been committed to and, in a twist of fate, nudged him towards the performing arts instead.
“Where I grew up in Australia, you weren’t really a person unless you played sports, so I did that and enjoyed it enough,” he said.
“I remember lying on the floor and kind of laughing.”
At the time, Elordi was a student at Brisbane’s St Joseph’s Nudgee College, where he was juggling rugby commitments alongside rehearsals for a school play.
In the roundtable, where he appeared alongside Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Michael B. Jordan, Adam Sandler, Jeremy Allen White, Wagner Moura and Mark Hamill, he recalled facing pressure from his rugby coach to abandon acting altogether, with sport seen as the more serious pursuit. But being sidelined by injury gave him the space and the drive to fully lean into the stage, a decision that would ultimately spark his now-celebrated acting career.
“I’d been doing rehearsals for a play at school at the same time, and the rugby coach and I had just had a conversation about me needing to choose one or the other,” he continued.
“I was kind of like Troy Bolton in High School Musical.”
WHAT a reference! A+. Gold star. Top marks. No notes.
The revelation comes after a throwback image of Elordi from his school days made the rounds online, leaked by none other than his high school.
A few months back, the St Joseph’s Nudgee College Old Boys’ Association posted a pic of the actor taken in his final year of school in 2015, offering a glimpse of a very different Jacob to the Hollywood heartthrob fans know today.
“Jacob Elordi’s (NCOB 2015) transformation for the role of Frankenstein is being hailed as one of the most striking reinventions of the character in years,” the school wrote in the post.
“Viewers and critics alike are pointing to the precision of his physical work, the emotional nuance beneath the creature’s restraint, and the way he anchors every scene with a presence that feels both monumental and unexpectedly vulnerable. Many are calling it a defining performance that pushes him into a new artistic tier.”
It adds: “St Joseph’s Nudgee College community are proud of all he has achieved and how he has stepped so convincingly into a role of this scale and cultural weight.”
And to think, he could’ve been on a footy field instead!
The post Jacob Elordi Says Breaking His Back During High School Kick-Started His Acting Career appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
