Jacob Elordi Only Had A Few Hundred In The Bank Before 'Euphoria'

Euphoria star Jacob Elordi admitted to GQ that before he booked the role of Nate Jacobs he was couch surfing, storing all his stuff in his car, and watching the small savings in his bank account rapidly deplete. In 2017, the Australian-born Elordi had just wrapped filming Netflix’s teen sensation The Kissing Booth and moved to Los Angeles. He slept in a friend’s living room in the San Fernando Valley and sometimes in his Mitsubishi.

“I wasn't booking jobs,” explained Elordi. “I think I had — I don't know, $400 or $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.”

It’s a storyline that mirrors that of his co-star Sydney Sweeney, who recently revealed she still wouldn’t be able to live comfortably in Los Angeles on her acting earning alone.

For Elordi, it was great news he had been cast on the HBO hit, but the money didn’t hit his account right away. He was still juggling his living situation.

“My car was like a hoarder's, stacked with boxes and coat hangers and things,” he said, adding that a producer noticed his situation and got him a hotel room. “I got really lucky ... Which is just an L.A. story, you know?"

It wasn’t long before Elordi’s life as a struggling actor was officially over. The Kissing Booth was released in 2018, and he had four million new followers on Instagram over night.

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

It was so intense that Elordi says he wanted to quit acting, adding that this “might sound quite sensitive and dramatic, but I am sensitive and I’m very dramatic. I hated being a character to the public. I felt so far from myself.”

“It felt like, all of a sudden, I was a poster,” he continued. “Like I was a billboard. It felt like it was for sale. 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.”

Elordi says he managed to overcome some of these feelings after talking to his Deep Water co-star Ben Affleck. Affleck is definitely a guy who knows something about the spotlight.