It takes a village to raise a monster.
For Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, he assembled a cast to die for. And like Victor Frankenstein building his creature, del Toro was looking for a particular body part. “I cast eyes,” the Academy Award–winning filmmaker tells Netflix. “The eyes of the actor are what makes the character.”
Take the film’s central pairing: Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the creature he creates. “You need Oscar’s eyes in order to know that he’s tortured and he thinks he’s doing good and he’s driven,” del Toro says. “In order for the creature to have innocence, you need Jacob’s eyes.”
For casting director Robin D. Cook, it’s del Toro’s eyes that are crucial to his filmmaking. “If an actor auditions for me, I will see the potential, but Guillermo can see the performance,” Cook says. “He’s able to go a step further. He is always able to see the finished product, and it’s mind-blowing when you go to watch the actual film.”
You can meet the cast of Frankenstein below. The new film is now in select theaters and on Netflix.
Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant, egotistical scientist whose electrifying experiments have made him an outcast in the world of academia. As he gets closer to his dream of creating life, he’ll learn a simple truth: only monsters play god.
Del Toro and Isaac’s bohemian interpretation of the iconic character is closer to a rock star than a mad scientist. “He’s a misunderstood artist, and that fuels him to provoke,” Isaac tells Netflix. “That punk rock energy was an important thing. When Victor walks into the lab for the first time, he’s imagining it like a stage, not as a lab. That was a really unexpected way to hook into the guy.”
Isaac’s performance as a struggling troubadour in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis won him the National Society of Film Critics’ Best Actor award. He’s played memorable roles in blockbusters like the Star Wars sequel trilogy and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, as well as in independent films like Ex Machina, A Most Violent Year, and The Card Counter. He’ll next be seen in Season 2 of Lee Sung Jin’s critically acclaimed BEEF.
The Creature is Victor Frankenstein’s creation, a misbegotten collection of battlefield body parts who soon develops a consciousness of his own, separate from the whims of his maker.
Elordi found more in common with the Creature than you might expect. “I felt like this role came to me at a point where I needed to completely reset and rebuild as a new sort of person, which is the exact journey the Creature goes on,” he tells Netflix. “It completely reignited my passion for movies and for making movies — which wasn’t even extinguished, but I have a whole different energy toward making movies now.”
Elordi rose to fame on Sam Levinson’s hit HBO series Euphoria and in The Kissing Booth films. He’s since appeared in the series The Narrow Road to the Deep North, as well as films like Priscilla, The Sweet East, Oh, Canada, and Saltburn, the latter of which garnered him a BAFTA nomination. He’ll next be seen in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights and Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars.
Elizabeth is the woman caught between Victor and his creation; betrothed to Victor’s brother William, she finds herself drawn to the mysterious creature. Claire Frankenstein is Victor and William’s mother, whose tragic death knocked their world off its axis.
Both roles are played by Goth, who found her way into the characters with help from the film’s wardrobe department. “I only ever really felt like I was truly connected to her once I was in the costumes and on the set and everything was working in alignment,” Goth says. “I started to see a lot of parallels between me and Elizabeth in this experience that I was going through in real time. It took a lot of work to finally realize that in my quietest moments, when I can be my most authentic self — that’s where she exists.”
Goth is no stranger to dual roles; she played both hero and villain of Ti West’s X trilogy: X, Pearl, and MaXXXine. Other film appearances include A Cure for Wellness, Infinity Pool, High Life, Suspiria, and Emma.
Felix Kammerer as William Frankenstein (center)
William Frankenstein is Victor’s younger brother, the family’s golden child. Separated as children, William and Victor reunite as adults — with William now engaged to the bewitching Elizabeth.
Kammerer drew from del Toro’s own life for his performance. “I took a lot from him telling me about his brother and him when they were younger,
how their relationship developed,” Kammerer tells Netflix. “He definitely put a lot of himself in the script, into the characters. It felt biographical to some degree.”
Austrian actor Kammerer made his feature film debut in Edward Berger’s Oscar-winning 2022 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. He’s since appeared in films including Ron Howard’s Eden and television series including All the Light We Cannot See.
Heinrich Harlander is a wealthy patron of the arts who subsidizes his taste for the finer things by dealing arms amid the Crimean War. He has his own motives for funding Victor’s experiments, but Victor is happy to take what he can get.
Del Toro and Waltz collaborated on building the character, even tweaking his characterization on set. “That’s the beauty of moviemaking,” Waltz tells Netflix. “There are certain things that are fixed and determined during shooting, but that doesn’t mean that it is written in stone or set for all times. It’s a living process.”
Waltz won two Academy Awards for his performances in Quentin Tarantino films: one for his turn as Nazi Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds and another for his performance as dentist/bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained. He’s also appeared in films including The French Dispatch, Downsizing, Alita: Battle Angel, Big Eyes, The Legend of Tarzan, and Water for Elephants. He voiced the foxlike Count Volpe in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and was the fourth actor to take on the role of James Bond’s erstwhile nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Spectre and No Time to Die.
Christian Convery as young Victor Frankenstein (center)
Young Victor Frankenstein is a troubled young man brought up by an abusive father and an absent mother.
“He’s trained by a sociopathic father that wants him
to perform and perform and perform higher than his level,” del Toro says. “He’s very arrogant and, at the same time, very tender.”
Convery’s breakout role was as Gus, the deer-human protagonist of Sweet Tooth. He’s also appeared in films including The Tiger Rising, Beautiful Boy, Cocaine Bear, and The Monkey, and television series including One Piece, Legion, and Invinicible. He’ll next be seen opposite Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in David Robert Mitchell’s upcoming science fiction film Flowervale Street.
Charles Dance as Leopold Frankenstein (left)
Leopold Frankenstein is Victor and William’s cold, controlling father, who set the young men on their path toward destruction.
Dance’s best-known role is the similarly imperious patriarch Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones. He began his career on stage, performing in Royal Shakespeare Company productions during the 1970s. Since, he’s built a formidable resume of screen roles, including Gosford Park, Mank, The Imitation Game, Last Action Hero, Alien 3, and For Your Eyes Only. On television, he’s appeared in series including The Jewel in the Crown, Bleak House, and The Crown, for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
Captain Anderson is a ship captain stranded in the Arctic. There, he comes across a frostbitten Victor Frankenstein, who tells a story that will shake Anderson to his core.
Danish actor Mikkelsen has appeared in films including Headhunter and The Day Will Come, and in television series including Sherlock, House of Cards, The Kingdom: Exodus, and The Witcher. He voiced the notorious Grand Admiral Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels and reprised the role in live-action in Ahsoka.
David Bradley as The Blind Man (right)
The Blind Man is an elderly man who encounters the Creature during his wanderings.
Bradley voiced Geppetto in del Toro’s Oscar–winning Pinocchio adaptation; he also voiced Merlin in the del Toro–created Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia and played Professor Abraham Setrakian on del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain. Elsewhere, Bradley is known for his performances on television series including Our Friends in the North, Game of Thrones, Broadchurch, and Doctor Who. He played Hogwarts caretaker Argus Filch in the Harry Potter films and appeared in all three of Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy.
