Jacob Elordi built the Creature in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein through three connected elements: body work shaped by butoh and silent-film references, a voice affected by his dentures, and prosthetic makeup designed by Mike Hill to keep his expressions visible. The performance did not come from one technique. Elordi described a process where preparation continued while filming, with discoveries made on set as well as before production.
Movement began with a newly born body
Elordi said del Toro gave him a reading list that included a book about baby development, butoh, the Book of Job, and Paradise Lost. That material gave him routes into a character who begins life without the habits of an adult. In Netflix’s account of the production, Elordi connected the Creature’s early state to a baby’s first years in the world, when the character is “consciously unconscious.”
Butoh was one of the references Elordi studied. W Magazine reported that he trained in the Japanese dance-theater form to develop a new physicality for the Creature. The magazine quoted him comparing that work to “reanimating a corpse.” That describes a reference point for the role, not a complete formula for every gesture on screen.
The movement also changed over the film. Del Toro told Netflix that Elordi played the Creature “like a baby in the beginning,” then moved “like a man” later. This progression fits the role’s narrative arc: the Creature enters the world as a newly created being and gains experience through injury, language, isolation, and encounters with other people.
Mike Hill described a matching visual progression in the prosthetic design. Early in the film, the Creature wears wraps around his waist and hands. Hill called him “basically a nubile newborn then.” By the end, the character has been through accidents, wears large furs, and has a more visibly damaged exterior. The costume, makeup, and physical performance changed together as the character’s circumstances changed.
Silent films gave expression a central place
Elordi said that many of del Toro’s film references came from silent cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. He focused on the nuance of expression required when a performer must communicate strong feeling without pushing it into obvious artifice.
That reference matters because the Creature’s face had to carry a large share of the performance. Hill’s design rejected the familiar image of a body covered in conspicuous wounds and stitching. He and del Toro discussed a different premise: Victor Frankenstein is attempting to create the perfect man, so Hill did not treat the Creature as if he had survived a crude accident.
Hill tailored the makeup after Elordi had been cast. He cited Elordi’s physicality, eyes, bone structure, cheekbones, and mannerisms as features that shaped the design. The work was built for the actor rather than imposed on an anonymous body.
Elordi gave a precise account of how the prosthetics directed attention. He said the scars and brow line pointed toward his expression, especially his eyes. Hill had the same aim. The design could frame the face while leaving the eyes available for close emotional work.
That distinction prevents a common misunderstanding about heavy prosthetics. Makeup can alter a performer’s face and silhouette, yet it does not replace acting choices. Hill designed a practical framework. Elordi used that framework through his gaze, posture, timing, and voice.
The prosthetics were built for performance, not just appearance
Hill and his team created a 42-piece full-body prosthetic application for Elordi. Even days focused on the head and shoulders involved about a dozen overlapping appliances. The scale of that work demanded consistency, since the look had to hold across different shooting days and angles.
The design included more than skin appliances. Elordi wore dentures that enlarged his teeth and one large brown contact lens that made his face asymmetrical. Hill said the different eyes could support different camera choices. Shots could favor the larger eye for a more monstrous side of the character or the smaller right eye for a more human side.
Those comments describe the design team’s options, not a rule that every close-up has a fixed meaning. Hill was explaining how the asymmetry could be used while filming. The final effect depended on framing, editing, lighting, Elordi’s expression, and the scene itself.
Elordi treated the application process as part of the workday’s performance. He said his performance began when he entered the makeup trailer. He also recalled del Toro asking him to approach makeup as a ritual. In a later account, Elordi remembered meeting Hill and hair stylist Megan Many before dawn in a Toronto parking lot, where the team prepared him for hours before filming.
The process was demanding, but it also gave the actor repeated time inside the Creature’s physical form. Elordi did not describe the prosthetics as a disguise he simply endured. He described them as part of the transition into the character.
The dentures shaped the Creature’s voice
Elordi gave the clearest explanation of the voice in his Netflix interview: the dentures told him what the Creature sounded like. He said he experimented with throat chants in front of a mirror, then put in the false teeth and found that the Creature “just started speaking.”
That account separates the physical trigger from the acting work. The dentures did not create a voice by themselves. Elordi had already been working with vocal sounds. Once the teeth changed the shape and feeling of his mouth, they affected how he formed words and helped him locate the character’s speech.
He also rejected the idea of one single source for the voice. Elordi described it as a composition of many voices. He linked the Creature’s learning of language to the Blind Man, played by David Bradley. The voice therefore belongs to the character’s development in the story as well as to the actor’s preparation.
The dentures had a visual purpose too. Hill used them to make the Creature’s teeth appear larger. Their effect crossed the boundary between appearance and sound: they changed the mouth seen by the camera and the mouth Elordi had to speak through.
Preparation continued while the cameras rolled
Elordi had little time before arriving in Toronto. In one account, he said he had roughly four weeks to prepare; in another, he described only about three weeks between wrapping a project in Australia and joining del Toro’s set. Both descriptions point to a compressed preparation period.
He said the short schedule led him to discover parts of the role while filming. Some moments were spontaneous and organic, things he could not have planned in advance or placed into his body or mind before the shoot. That does not diminish the research. It shows how the research, prosthetics, sets, costumes, direction, and scene partners met during production.
Elordi described the full environment as part of that meeting point. He cited the altered structure of his face, the weight of leather and furs, and practical sets that placed him inside the Creature’s world. The performance developed inside those conditions, not in isolation from them.
The Creature’s movement, voice, and look were therefore closely related, but they came from distinct hands. Elordi developed physical and vocal choices through research, rehearsal, objects he wore, and discoveries on set. Hill’s team created the prosthetic body, teeth, contact lens, and facial design that supported those choices. Del Toro’s references and direction shaped the larger path from innocence toward a harder adulthood.
For Elordi, the result was a character whose body changes as his understanding changes. The early movements draw on a being new to the world. Later physicality carries the history of what happened to him. The voice emerges through altered teeth, vocal exploration, and a character learning language. The makeup keeps the actor’s eyes and expression in view. That combination is the documented basis of the Creature’s screen presence, as described by Elordi and Hill in Netflix Tudum’s production interview.
How does a prosthetic design change an actor’s choices without replacing them?
Which moments in the film show the shift from the Creature’s early innocence to his later physicality?
