‘Euphoria’ star Jacob Elordi started acting at the age of 12, and prior to that, he was also a star rugby player in school. In fact, he was cast as the gender-bending character Oberon, King of the Faeries, in a play of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and although he was passionate about acting, it also fueled the bullies to start throwing homophobic comments at him.
During an interview with GQ, the 25-year-old actor opened up about the homophobic bullying that he experienced in school and how he dealt with it.
“From the moment I did a play I was called gay at school. But I had this abundance of confidence in myself. Because I could do both: I was quite good at sport and I think I was quite good at theater. I felt like I was above it, or it made me feel older. It made me feel wiser,” Elordi revealed.
He also said that the negative experience led him to welcome and embrace the femininity.
“When they said I was gay, I remember leaning into the makeup. I was like, if I’m going to be the King of the Fairies, I’m going to be the f***ing hottest King of the Fairies you’ve ever seen.
I started welcoming those kinds of characters. I started welcoming the femininity. I started speaking with my hands. I started really playing the thespian.
I never was worried that my peers would think that I was less than a man. And also, there’s the classic thing of I was doing plays with girl schools. I’m spending my weekends with the most beautiful women from the school next-door, reading the most romantic words ever written,” the Australian actor shared.
Amazingly enough, the homophobia did not knock Elordi down, and instead, it motivated him to prove his former bullies wrong and thrive in his acting career. He decided to break the discrimination and stereotypes by abandoning things described as “masculine” activities, and carried on reveling in the arts.
“I enjoyed playing the actor. I stepped away from beer culture and from sport culture, and I was like, well, if you think this is gay, I’m going to be who I am when I was your friend, which is this hetero guy, but I’m going to play the arts.
I’m going to show you that’s bulls**t. I could never understand, how could you label anything, ever? How could you label sport as masculine? How does your sexuality inform your prowess as an athlete, or your prowess as a performer?” the actor stated.
Elordi is known for playing Noah Flynn in ‘The Kissing Booth’ movie series, and of course, he also plays the role of Nate Jacobs in the HBO drama series ‘Euphoria.’
Source: People.com
