Sometimes parents give you advice that could save you from big trouble. Other times, they accidentally predict your future career move with the accuracy of a fortune cookie taped to a brick. Jacob Elordi has one of those stories. His mom warned him years ago about working with acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro. “You must never work with this man,” she once said. It wasn’t a joke.
Right now, Elordi is heading into awards season, and he’s even planning to attend the Oscars with his mother, Melissa. And it’s a little ironic, considering she warned him about playing these sorts of parts when he was young. Now in 2026, she’s taking red carpet photos as a proud parent.
Growing up in Australia, years before Elordi became a working actor, the actor scrolled through the horror section of the DVD store, when a certain movie cover captured his attention. The movie was Pan’s Labyrinth. In Australia it carried an M rating, which basically meant that parents decide if you’re ready to watch it. Melissa agreed to let him rent it, but only after laying down one condition that would age like milk in the sun: “You must never work with this man.”
The man was Guillermo del Toro. The same Guillermo del Toro who later cast Elordi in Netflix’s Frankenstein.
Elordi remembers the exact moment the DVD art got its claws in him. “And I saw the tree and the little girl, and I turned it around, the DVD case, and I saw the Pale Man. And I remember thinking, what is that?’” he told Variety. But if you’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth, you get it.
Elordi tells the story now with a laugh, then shrugs at fate doing its thing: “And lo and behold.”
Years later, the universe turned that moment into a reality. The actor originally lined up for Elordi’s role dropped out nine weeks before filming began, which left Elordi about four weeks to prep.
Del Toro, naturally, couldn’t resist and joked when he heard the story, “It’s good to disobey one’s mother.”
Elordi went on to say that he was “so excited and so sure when I read the screenplay for the first time, that I had no fear… there’s no other filmmaker on this planet that could make a truly great Frankenstein film.”
For del Toro, this isn’t a casual project either. It’s very personal. He first read Mary Shelley’s novel at age 11, and he’s carried it for decades like a secret diary that bites back. “I just felt this book should exist, because [Frankenstein’s] Creature is me. You know, I identify entirely with the Creature. And I wanted to tell the story the way Mary Shelley wanted to tell it, which is, it becomes every human. It is the origin of humanity and understanding as paradise lost … I know this sounds exaggerated, but it’s my religion. I was born and raised Catholic, and then at 11, I became a Frankensteinist.”
So yeah. Listen to your mom. Unless she tells you to avoid the director you’ll one day call the only person who can make your dream project work. Then maybe just be like Jacob Elordi and nod, return the DVD on time, and keep your schedule open for the Oscars.
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