Jacob Elordi thought he was going crazy until he saw a classic John Cassavetes film.

 I probably made three movies that I thought were pretty bad when I was young, and I had hopes and dreams of being this kind of terrific, ferocious stage actor. So I was pretty not fond of myself at that time,  explained the Australian actor during an event presented by Cartier Cinema Club at Santa Monica's Aero Theatre on Friday.  And I watched this movie and it was one of the first times that I saw the creative process of an actor sort of fleshed out in detail. The movie made me feel a lot less insane and alone. 

It proved to be such a pivotal experience in his creative life that Elordi handpicked that film - 1977's Opening Night starring Gena Rowlands as a renowned actress teetering on the edge of a breakdown as she inches closer towards big Broadway opening night - for Friday's screening, which marked the first stateside Cartier Cinema Club event after the initiative's launch last month at the Venice Film Festival. The luxury house created the initiative to honor the spirit of cinema while paying tribute to artists who make big-screen work. Cartier ambassador Elordi not only selected the film, he sat for a 30-minute discussion about it alongside Oscar-winning filmmaker Sean Baker and moderator Kim Gordon.

Like Rowlands' character, Myrtle Gordon, Elordi thought he, too,  was having some form of mental breakdown.  But he was able to exhale once he saw how the storyline played out. Rowlands stars alongside Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, Joan Blondell, Paul Stewart, Zohra Lampert and others.

 This movie showed me that what was actually happening was hopefully the artistic process, the process of creating to a character. You can't just learn the lines and say the lines. It showed me all the stuff that was going on inside that I thought was sort of my body and mind breaking down [but] was actually a part of the acting process,  explained the Oscar nominated Frankenstein star.

Elordi revealed that he watched Opening Night last week in preparation for today's event, and he had some similar thoughts to those fr
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