Some actors become famous. Then some actors become something else entirely. Jacob Elordi, the 28-year-old Australian who started his career as a Netflix teen heartthrob, is now an Oscar-nominated leading man, the new face of Bleu de Chanel, and the clearest example of what a male star looks like in 2026.
He has done what almost no actor of his generation has managed: he made the transition look inevitable. Not forced, not rebranded, not reinvented. Just quietly, methodically built into something the industry could not ignore.
The announcement that Elordi had succeeded Timothée Chalamet as Chanel’s global fragrance ambassador was the moment everything clicked into place publicly. But the story of how he got there is far more interesting than the headline.
From Heartthrob to Respected Actor — How the Image Shift Happened
Very few actors survive the teen-idol pipeline with their credibility intact. Most get swallowed by it. Elordi did not.
His breakout in The Kissing Booth trilogy (2018–2021) put him in millions of living rooms, but it was his role as Nate Jacobs in HBO’s Euphoria that planted the first seed of something different. Nate Jacobs is an antihero — complex, unsettling, and far from likeable — and Elordi played him with a stillness that felt genuinely dangerous. It was not a heartthrob performance. It was a controlled one.
Then came the pivot that changed everything.
Director Sofia Coppola brought him to the next level when she cast him as Elvis Presley in Priscilla. Elordi himself has said the role felt like “knocking on the door of Hollywood” and begging to be taken seriously. Coppola answered. Then Guillermo del Toro answered. Then Emerald Fennell answered — twice.
He achieved critical acclaim and recognition for his performances in Priscilla and Saltburn (both 2023) and Frankenstein (2025). Each of those films was a deliberate choice. None of them was safe. And collectively, they rewrote the public perception of who Jacob Elordi actually is.
He scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role as The Monster in Netflix’s adaptation of Frankenstein — a film that received a 15-minute standing ovation following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. At 28 years old, he described the nomination as “wind in the sails.” That restraint, too, is part of the brand.
Saltburn and the Cultural Moment That Defined His Public Identity
If one project crystallised who Elordi is in the cultural imagination, it was Saltburn.
He’s been credited with redefining masculinity by blending tough-guy roles with high-fashion aesthetics and a quiet rejection of social media culture. Saltburn gave that combination its sharpest edge. His performance as Felix Catton — beautiful, careless, and tragically oblivious — became an internet obsession. Not because of anything explicit, but because of what Elordi brought to the space between scenes: a kind of cool detachment that felt genuinely cinematic.
The film also had an unexpected side effect. It turned Elordi into a reference point for a generation rethinking what male desirability looks like on screen. Felix Catton was not a superhero. He was not a tortured bad boy in a leather jacket. He was something more unnerving: a person completely at home in his own skin, in a world built entirely for people like him. Elordi played that without irony and without apology, and the result was a character who lived in people’s heads long after the credits rolled.
His reunion with Saltburn director Emerald Fennell for Wuthering Heights — described by critics as “the Titanic of Gen Z” — was already being framed as one of the most highly anticipated films of 2026. That level of expectation does not happen by accident. It is the result of an audience that has decided to follow an actor wherever he goes.
Chanel, Luxury Fashion, and a New Model of Male Celebrity Endorsement
The Bleu de Chanel announcement is worth understanding in its full context, because it is not simply a perfume deal.
Chanel has historically used this fragrance campaign as a marker of cultural seriousness. From Gaspard Ulliel to Timothée Chalamet, the Bleu de Chanel story has always revolved around a charismatic, mysterious character and a dramatic, poetic narrative overseen by the vision of Martin Scorsese, James Gray, or Steve McQueen. The new campaign will be directed by Alfonso Cuarón. This is not a brand choosing a famous face. This is a brand making a statement.
Elordi joins a growing roster of men pushing Chanel further into the menswear sphere, alongside Pedro Pascal and A$AP Rocky. But his appointment carries a particular weight, because it follows a relationship that was built gradually and deliberately.
Chanel’s Head of Global Creative Resources for Fragrance and Beauty, Thomas du Pré de Saint Maur, had been following Elordi’s career since Euphoria. He first worked with the actor on the See You at 5 film for Chanel N°5 in 2024, alongside Margot Robbie, directed by Luca Guadagnino. The Bleu de Chanel ambassadorship was not a cold call. It was the next chapter of an already-established creative relationship.
Du Pré de Saint Maur described Elordi as someone who “perfectly embodies Bleu de Chanel: expressing freedom, mystery, magnetism, and a masculinity that blends modernity with a certain classic elegance.”
That phrase — “a masculinity that blends modernity with a certain classic elegance” — is doing a lot of work. It is also exactly what makes Elordi so commercially valuable to a house like Chanel.
What Stylists, Directors, and Brands See When They Look at Him
There is a reason every major creative in Hollywood seems to want Jacob Elordi in their project right now.
Chanel’s Thomas du Pré de Saint Maur described him as “a bit like the boy of the moment” — an actor with strong physical presence and a magnetic aura, while still conveying sensitivity and not taking himself too seriously. That combination is extraordinarily rare and extraordinarily bankable.
His fashion instincts have also played a significant role. He helped bring the “it bag” into the masculine realm, most notably by carrying a Bottega Veneta Cassette bag at public appearances. That single choice generated an outsized cultural conversation about men and accessories. He wore a boxy, cropped Chanel jacket during the Los Angeles leg of the Wuthering Heights press tour, again without making it feel like a costume. He just wore it. That ease is the thing brands spend millions trying to manufacture and rarely can.
He channels what Chanel describes as “modern, instinctive masculinity and a spirit that favours individuality over convention.” For luxury houses navigating a rapidly shifting conversation about how men engage with fashion and beauty, that positioning is exactly what they need.
The Masculinity Conversation — and Where Elordi Sits in It
This is perhaps the most interesting part of the Jacob Elordi cultural story, and the one that gets talked about least directly.
Elordi has contributed to the broader cultural conversation around mental health, body image, and toxic masculinity, and his willingness to speak out on these issues has made him a role model for young people seeking to challenge harmful societal norms. But what makes him genuinely influential on this front is not what he says. It is what he does without comment.
He carries bags. He wears fashion. He plays monsters, antiheroes and brooding gothic figures. He brings his mother to the Oscars. He talks about characters with emotional intelligence in interviews and doesn’t show discomfort while doing it. He is intensely private about his personal life without making privacy feel like a defensive posture.
The “Jacob Elordi Effect” has been described as teaching a generation of young men that you can be masculine while deeply caring about aesthetics and fashion. That is an underrated cultural shift. The idea that style and sensitivity are compatible with masculinity is not new, but finding a figure who embodies it without making it a thesis statement is rarer than it sounds.
His Global Reach and the Audience He Commands in 2026
The numbers behind Elordi’s cultural moment are significant.
In addition to Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, he is set to star in Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic film The Dog Stars and the gothic fairy tale Outer Dark alongside Lily-Rose Depp. He also returned for the final season of Euphoria on HBO, which he described as “a completely new show again” with a “whole new sort of life in it.”
His awards season haul for Frankenstein included winning Best Supporting Actor at the Critics Choice Awards and the AACTA International Awards, with nominations at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Satellite Awards, Saturn Awards, and SAG Awards. For a 28-year-old who was best known for a Netflix rom-com trilogy six years ago, that trajectory is almost without precedent.
He is only the third man in history to be the face of Bleu de Chanel, a fragrance that has been running for sixteen years. The Bleu de Chanel L’Exclusif campaign — shot by photographer Karim Sadli and directed by Alfonso Cuarón — launches in May 2026.
What Chanel bought when they signed Jacob Elordi is not just a famous face. They bought the clearest embodiment of where male stardom is heading: serious, stylish, emotionally present, and completely uninterested in explaining itself. That combination, right now, is worth more than almost anything else in Hollywood.
