Oscar-Winning Makeup Artist Feared Jacob Elordi's Reaction to 10-Hour “Frankenstein” Transformation

Michael Nied, Daniela AvilaMon, March 16, 2026 at 6:26 PM UTC

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Jacob Elordi, Jacob Elordi in costume as the Creature in 'Frankenstein'Credit: Dave Benett/WireImage; Netflix/Instagram -

Jacob Elordi spent 10 hours a day in prosthetics to transform into the Creature for Guillermo del Toro's film

Makeup artists Mike Hill and Jordan Samuel revealed backstage at the 2026 Oscars that Elordi stood for 4-5 hours during the process and never complained once

The film won the 2026 Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, with Hill praising Elordi's patience and dedication

The makeup artist responsible for transforming Jacob Elordi into the Creature in Frankenstein thought that the actor was going to "hate" him at some point. But he wound up being pleasantly surprised.

The 28-year-old Euphoria alum spent a lot of time getting ready to play the iconic monster alongside Oscar Isaac's Victor Frankenstein in the reworked classic from director Guillermo del Toro — 10 hours a day to be exact, as he had multiple prosthetics applied to his body.

The hard work paid off with a big win at the 2026 Academy Awards on Sunday, March 15 when the movie took home the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

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Jacob Elordi as The Creature in Frankenstein.Credit: Ken Woroner/Netflix

While delivering his acceptance speech onstage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Calif., Elordi's makeup and prosthetics artist Mike Hill acknowledged that the actor spent 400 hours getting into and out of his makeup while filming the movie.

Speaking to the press backstage, Hill provided more information about the process, saying, "The makeup did take 10 hours from head to toe because we had to make him into a living statue basically."

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He continued, adding, "And Jacob and I, when I first met Jacob, I said, 'Look, you're going to hate me at 2:00 a.m. and I'm going to hate you for hating me, but we've got a movie to do.' "

That didn't end up being the case: "We didn't hate. He's the nicest man on the planet. The most patient man on the planet. Ten hours a day, 56 times, and the man didn't complain even once. And now we're good mates," he clarified.

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Jordan Samuel, who also worked on the makeup team, chimed in, adding that Hill and Elordi had to arrive on set sometimes six to seven hours earlier than the rest of the cast and crew.

Jordan Samuel, Mike Hill and Cliona Furey at the 2026 OscarsCredit: Kevin Winter/Getty

"They'd been there since like midnight, in some cases, and we would come in at six or seven in the morning to start putting the regular cast through. And I have to mention something that Mike doesn't often mention, that you guys need to understand. So that was 10 hours in makeup, but you need to understand, for four or five of those hours, Jacob stood like this and had the makeup applied. He was not sitting in a chair and relaxing. So again, hats off to him."

Asked how he created his iteration of the monster, Hill said, "For the Creature, yeah, you basically just had to start afresh and, you know, don't look at any past interpretations."

"Also don't care if there's an overlap. What are we going to do? This, you know, this creature's been around for hundreds of years now. So it was basically, make him look like he stepped out of the 1800s. Victor Frankenstein was not making an old Volkswagen, he was making a Porsche. So your monster can be, doesn't have to be ugly, it just has to be different, and that's what we tried to do," Hill explained.

Jacob Elordi attends the Oscars in March 2026Credit: ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty

The artist added, "Plus he had to also not look like an accident victim. He had to look like this thing had been precisely made, and that's why we designed geometric shapes, etc."

Reflecting on the process of getting into character in an August 2025 interview with Variety, Elordi said, "You throw time away when you make a film like this."

“I stopped having a clock, and I would just wait till the SUV arrived. That meant it was time to go. I didn’t do breakfast, lunch or dinner, or think in terms of morning, afternoon, night. It was just one time," he added, while del Toro praised his dedication.

“Never once did he come to me and complain,” del Toro told added. “Never once did he come to me and say, ‘I’m tired. I’m hungry. Can I go?’ And he put in 20-hour days.”

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