Jacob Elordi reveals how a near-tragic on-field injury kick-started his celebrated showbiz career

Rising star Jacob Elordi has revealed how a sporting injury kicked off his celebrated career in showbusiness.

The 28-year-old Saltburn star said he was just 16 when he broke his back in a heavy tackle during a rugby match – which paved the way for his acting career.

At the time, he was at Brisbane’s St Joseph’s Nudgee College, and rehearsing for a school play – and fighting pressure from his coach to give up the stage.

‘Where I grew up in Australia, you weren’t really a person unless you played sports, so I did that and enjoyed it enough,’ Jacob said in a recent chat with the Hollywood Reporter.

Jacob said he fractured a bone in his back while lifting weights, and the injury was made worse after he took a tackle in a rugby match.

The Wuthering Heights actor compared his experience to a storyline featuring the Zac Efron character in High School Musical. 

Rising star Jacob Elordi has revealed how a sporting injury kicked off his celebrated career in showbusiness. The 28-year-old Saltburn star said he was just 16 when he broke his back in a heavy tackle during a rugby match – which paved the way for his acting career. (Pictured)

Jacob recalled his school days during a round table Hollywood Reporter interview with other Oscar hopefuls – including Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Adam Sandler, Mark Hamill, Michael B. Jordan, Jeremy Allen White, and Wagner Moura. (Pictured)

‘I remember lying on the floor and kind of laughing,’ Jacob continued. 

‘…I’d been doing rehearsals for a play at school at the same time, and the rugby coach and I had just had a conversation about me needing to choose one or the other. 

‘I was kind of like Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) in High School Musical.’

In the famed TV show, the Troy Bolton character, who is a basketball star, must decide between his sport and his talent for singing and acting.

Jacob, who has been tipped to receive an Academy Award nomination for his role in the 2025 Guillermo del Toro movie Frankenstein, recalled his school days during a round table Hollywood Reporter interview with other Oscar hopefuls – including Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Adam Sandler, Mark Hamill and Michael B. Jordan.

It comes after a school photograph of Jacob recently resurfaced.

The St Joseph’s Nudgee College Old Boys’ Association posted a picture showing the former pupil looking very different in his final year of school in 2015. 

The much-younger Jacob posed for the picture with his hands in his pockets, looking slightly awkward while wearing a striped blue and white blazer and a giant smile on his face.

Jacob has been tipped to receive an Academy Award nomination for his role as The Creature in the 2025 Guillermo del Toro movie Frankenstein

Jacob is also set to star alongside fellow Aussie Margot Robbie in the Emerald Fennell adaptation of Wuthering Heights. (Pictured)

Jacob’s alma mater gushed about how ‘proud’ they were of everything the star had achieved amid the glowing reviews of his performance in Guillermo del Toro’s new film.

‘Jacob Elordi’s (NCOB 2015) transformation for the role of Frankenstein is being hailed as one of the most striking reinventions of the character in years,’ the caption began.

‘The Nudgee Old Boy and wider St Joseph’s Nudgee College community are proud of all he has achieved and how he has stepped so convincingly into a role of this scale and cultural weight,’ they shared.

St Joseph’s Nudgee College is a Catholic boarding school for boys, located in Boondall, Brisbane.  

After growing up a theatre kid, the Australian star moved to Hollywood when he was just a teenager to pursue his acting career.

Born in 1997 in Brisbane, Jacob comes from a close-knit family as the youngest of four children with three elder sisters.

Jacob caught the acting bug early, and by 2017, not yet 20, he garnered his first taste of the spotlight when he played an extra in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, taking the uncredited role of a Saint Martin’s Marine.