Wuthering Heights Star Jacob Elordi Earns Daniel Day-Lewis Comparison From Co-Star

Margot Robbie is showering Wuthering Heights star Jacob Elordi with rave praise, turning up the heat on one of Hollywood’s fastest-rising talents.

Margot Robbie is aiming high with her new co-star. Ahead of their fiery new spin on Wuthering Heights premiering just in time for Valentine’s Day, she basically anointed Jacob Elordi as Gen Z’s Daniel Day-Lewis. That’s a torch you do not casually hand off, so let’s unpack why she thinks he’s earned it — and what it would actually take to live up to that comparison.

Margot Robbie’s big swing

While promoting their Emily Bronte adaptation — billed as a scorching hot, twisted tale — Robbie did not hold back on Elordi, who plays Heathcliff.

"I saw him play Heathcliff, and he is Heathcliff. It’s a character that has this lineage of other great actors who’ve played him, from Laurence Olivier to Richard Burton and Ralph Fiennes to Tom Hardy. To be a part of that is special. He’s incredible, and I believe in him so much. I honestly think he’s our generation’s Daniel Day-Lewis."

As compliments go, that lands near the ceiling.

Where Jacob Elordi is right now

The Australian actor broke big as Nate Jacobs on Euphoria and has been stacking serious filmmakers ever since. His current streak looks like this:

• Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla
• Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn
• Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada
• Guillermo del Toro’s long-gestating Frankenstein — which has him up for Best Supporting Actor at next month’s 98th Oscars

The Daniel Day-Lewis bar

Robbie’s measuring stick here is someone with three Oscars on the shelf for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood, and Lincoln — plus that savage, era-defining turn as Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York. Daniel Day-Lewis even stepped back in front of the camera in 2025 for the first time in eight years, appearing in his son’s psychological drama Anemone.

That legacy came with a brutal kind of selectivity and a deep-dive approach to performance. If Elordi truly wants to wear the crown Robbie just polished for him, he’d likely need to choose roles with the same ruthlessness and go all-in on the work. For what it’s worth, he’s already within striking distance on quantity — only five movie credits shy of Day-Lewis’s current 22. I just read the scorecard.

Day-Lewis on the craft

Part of why the comparison carries weight: Day-Lewis’s method has always been more than lore. He famously inhabits characters top to bottom during shoots — voice, clothes, even being addressed by the character’s name — pushing himself to a level that can get physically punishing, all in service of what ends up on screen. He addressed the chatter about that approach at last year’s BFI London Film Festival:

"All the recent commentary in the last few years about method acting is invariably from people who have little or no understanding of what it actually involves. It’s almost as if it’s some specious science that we’re involved in, or a cult. But it’s just a way of freeing yourself so that the spontaneity, when you are working with your colleagues in front of the camera, that you are free to respond in any way that you’ll move to in that moment."

"You have an obligation to try to understand as far as you’re humanly able to what it feels like to be inside of that experience."

Next up: a wild Wuthering Heights

Robbie and Elordi’s take on Emily Bronte’s classic drops this week, perfectly timed for date night — if your idea of romance comes with thunderclouds and obsession. The pitch calls it a scorching hot, twisted tale, and with Robbie tossing out Day-Lewis-sized praise, the spotlight on Elordi’s Heathcliff just got very bright. We’re about to see if the performance matches the prophecy.