Jacob Elordi Revealed That A Producer For “Euphoria” Put Him Up In A Hotel After They Realized That He Was So Broke He Was Living In His Car During Filming

Jacob Elordi Revealed That A Producer For “Euphoria” Put Him Up In A Hotel After They Realized That He Was So Broke He Was Living In His Car During Filming
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Jacob Elordi Revealed That A Producer For “Euphoria” Put Him Up In A Hotel After They Realized That He Was So Broke He Was Living In His Car During Filming

Jacob has admitted that if he didn’t land the role of Nate in Euphoria, he’d have been forced to move back to his home country of Australia.

By NwjSePPx5_large.jpg?crop=394%253A393%253B-1%252C38&downsize=60:*&output-format=jpg&output-quality=autoby Stephanie Soteriou

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted 13 minutes agoTwitterFacebookLink

Jacob Elordi was just 19 years old when he packed his bags and moved from his home country of Australia to Los Angeles, California in a bid to pursue an acting career.

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Rich Polk / Getty Images for IMDb

Unlike many wannabe actors, Jacob didn’t have to spend too long on the audition circuit before he landed his first major role in a Netflix rom-com.

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Rachel Murray / Getty Images for Netflix

He was cast as Noah Flynn, a romantic lead in the streaming service hit The Kissing Booth, which made him — quite literally — an overnight star.

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Netflix

The movie was released at midnight California time one evening in 2018, which meant that Jacob simply woke up to four million new social media followers and fans across the globe one morning.

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Instagram: @jacobelordi

He went on to land the role of abusive Nate Jacobs in the gritty HBO series Euphoria, and it wasn’t long before he started to frequent red carpets, fashion shows, and magazine covers as his celebrity status grew.

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Dominique Charriau / WireImage

But in a new profile for GQ, Jacob has opened up about the difficult time period between The Kissing Booth and Euphoria, where he only had a few hundred dollars to his name and planned to return to Australia after failing to book any acting work.

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David Livingston / Getty Images

In fact, times were so hard for the actor that he was living in his car when work on Euphoria began — and when a kindhearted producer noticed what was going on, they put him up in a hotel.

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Jean Baptiste Lacroix / WireImage

Filming for The Kissing Booth took place in South Africa, and when it wrapped in 2017 Jacob crashed on a friend’s couch in San Fernando Valley.

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Paul Archuleta / FilmMagic

He later began to sleep in his 2004 Mitsubishi, parking up on Mulholland Drive before buckling down for the night.

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Steve Jennings / WireImage

“I wasn’t booking jobs,” he told GQ. “I think I had, I don’t know, $400 to $800 left in my bank account and Euphoria was my last audition before I went home for a little while to make some money and recuperate.”

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Jp Yim / Getty Images for Fendi

Jacob ended up being one of the first actors cast in the 2019 show, and was eventually joined by stars such as Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, and Hunter Schafer.

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Jeff Kravitz / Getty Images for HBO

During filming for the pilot, a producer began to notice that Jacob spent a lot of time in his trailer as well as the car parked next to it, which was full of the actor’s possessions.

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HBO

“My car was like a hoarder’s, stacked with boxes and coat hangers and things,” Jacob explained.

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HBO

After realizing that he didn’t have a home to go to, the producer got Jacob a room at a boutique hotel, The Standard, in West Hollywood.

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Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images

“I got really lucky, which is just an LA story, you know?” Jacob said.

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Mark Thompson / Getty Images

And while having a roof over his head helped Jacob in practical terms, the actor admitted that he consistently struggled with the concept of being famous.

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Robert Kamau / GC IMAGES

This began on the morning after The Kissing Booth’s release, when Jacob had to quickly delete personal photos from his Instagram account as his following dramatically increased.

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Instagram: @jacobelordi

His public social media profile was the same one that he’d used to document his teenage years while growing up, and it was difficult for him to have to remove the memories from his page.

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Jeff Kravitz / Getty Images for HBO

“I had to go through and delete my high school pictures because that was the Instagram that I used for my life,” he told GQ. “I wish people could understand how drastic that change was.”

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Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images

Jacob also struggled with being photographed by the paparazzi and, consequently, appearing in tabloids.

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Mega / GC Images

So when he worked alongside Hollywood long-timer Ben Affleck on the 2022 movie Deep Water, Jacob took the opportunity to ask him for advice.

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Amy Sussman / Getty Images

According to Jacob’s recollections, Ben issued him with a stark warning and said that the more tabloid attention he gets, the more he will start to feel “like a phony.”

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Stone-e / GC Images

And that appeared to echo Jacob’s own experience with the paparazzi so far. Discussing the first time that he was photographed while out and about, Jacob said that it made him feel as though he was “a billboard.”

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Raymond Hall / GC Images

“It felt like, all of a sudden, I was a poster. Like I was a billboard, it felt like I was for sale,” he told GQ. “Then my brain went through the fucking wringer. Like, I wasn’t sure if I was genuine. It really skews your view. It creates a very paranoid way of living.”

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Emma Mcintyre / WireImage

He later admitted that his biggest fear is losing his own sense of identity to other people’s perceptions of him.

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Noam Galai / GC Images

“I don’t want to lose the entirety of who I was when I was little,” Jacob said. “And when I grew up, to whatever this – I won’t say beast, because it’s not at all negative – to whatever this public version of myself is now. I still want to be in touch with my younger self, which is everything that I am.”

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Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic

“I don’t want to look at everything from the outside,” he added. ”I want to be in it. I want to see it all from my eyes.”

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Topics in this article

Jacob ElordiBen AffleckEuphoriaNwjSePPx5_large.jpg?crop=394%253A393%253B-1%252C38&downsize=60:*&output-format=jpg&output-quality=autoStephanie Soteriou

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Stephanie Soteriou is a Celebrity Reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in London

Contact Stephanie Soteriou at stephanie.soteriou@buzzfeed.com.

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