NEED TO KNOW
- Guillermo del Toro told PEOPLE at the Toronto International Film Festival that he was “not at all” intimidated by Jacob Elordi’s good looks when casting him as the Creature in Frankenstein
- “I was actually elated to have found him,” the director added
- Frankenstein is in theaters Oct. 17 and on Netflix Nov. 7
Guillermo del Toro wasn’t intimidated by Jacob Elordi’s good looks when he cast him as the Creature in Frankenstein.
Speaking with PEOPLE inside the PEOPLE/EW and Shutterstock studio during the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, Sept. 8, the director said he was “never daunted” by the 28-year-old heartthrob.
“I was actually elated to have found him,” says del Toro, 60.
The filmmaker says he was “not at all” intimidated by Eloridi’s looks, explaining, “All it takes is for me to see Saltburn. And talking to him, I just saw a magnificent actor, and the soulfulness of his eyes is just overwhelming.”
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Del Toro goes on, “I think actors are 50% their eyes. You want to look and you want to be looked [at]. And I think it was Billy Friedkin that said, ‘The most interesting landscape is the human face.’ ”
“And I think I felt [Jacob], his eyes, his nature, and how serious he is about the craft. I mean, this is a very serious man about craft and acting,” he adds.
Del Toro tells PEOPLE that he “proposed” the idea of studying butoh, a form of Japanese dance theatre, to Elordi “from the start” to prepare for his role.
“It’s a dance that is, on the surface, very disarticulate, but it’s dealing with grief and it’s dealing with death, and it’s dealing with war, and it’s dealing with trauma,” he says. “And it’s dealing with the transitional spaces between fire and water and air and fire.”
The three-time Oscar winner reasoned that the Creature is “like a baby,” in that “he can be absolutely furious one second and happy the next.”
“And I said, ‘Well, let’s study the developmental stages of a baby and talk about the nothingness from the beginning and how you’re going to evolve into a man that makes a decision.’ ” And I also thought, I said to him, ‘Watch your dog a lot.’ Because your dog can be at peace in the sun one second, in a furious fight with another dog the second after and then back in the shade.”
The “transitions” were crucial to nail down, because del Toro “wanted the Creature to not be just a languid goody two-shoes. He does kill people, and he’s capable of great violence.”
“And I said the Creature has two options in the world: Love or fear, which, fear is hatred. And that the final decision in the film has to do a lot with that,” he adds.
Frankenstein is in theaters Oct. 17 and on Netflix Nov. 7.
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