Jacob Elordi

Elordi was born on 26 June 1997 in Brisbane, Queensland, to a working class family consisting of his parents—Melissa, a stay-at-home mother and one-time cafeteria employee at Elordi's school, and John, a house painter who built the family's house—one older brother, and three older sisters. John immigrated to Australia from the Basque Country at age eight. "My grandfather would strangle me if he knew that it said Spanish descent", Elordi said of his Wikipedia page, which originally said his father's family was from Spain and he then corrected to Basque.

While a player on his school's rugby team, Elordi performed in school musicals starting at age 12, starring in productions of Seussical and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and he soon began taking acting classes. He was first inspired to become an actor by Heath Ledger, particularly because of his role in the 2008 film The Dark Knight. He also played Oberon in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At age 14, Elordi started practicing his American accent, modelling it after that of Vin Diesel. He also attempted modelling at his mother's suggestion at age 15, but was told he was too tall to fit into the sample clothes. Elordi attended the private all-boys, Roman Catholic secondary schools of St Kevin's College and St Joseph's College, where he felt "deeply unsettled". According to Elordi, he "barely finished high school".

Throughout secondary school, Elordi continued to play rugby until he broke a bone in his back during a match, which, according to him, pushed him away from athletics and toward acting. He has stated that, after reading Waiting for Godot in a theater class at age 15, acting "became [his] church" and his personality changed as a result. His mother also encouraged him to pursue acting. He was inspired by actors such as Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day-Lewis, Christian Bale, and Ledger and would read their biographies while emulating their behaviours. He later attended an acting school in Melbourne and moved to the United States in 2017 at age 19 to pursue a career in acting.