Who Plays Young Victor in Frankenstein 2025?

In Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 adaptation of Frankenstein, the role of Young Victor Frankenstein is played by Christian Convery. Known for his breakout performance in the Netflix series Sweet Tooth, Convery portrays the formative, younger years of the ambitious scientist, setting the stage for Oscar Isaac’s performance as the adult Victor.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025) represents a lifelong passion project for the Academy Award-winning director. After decades of development, the film finally materialized as a Netflix original, offering a visually stunning and emotionally grounded reimagining of Mary Shelley’s 1818 masterpiece. While much of the marketing and critical discourse surrounding the film focused on the transformation of Jacob Elordi into the Monster and Oscar Isaac’s portrayal of the tortured Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the inclusion of Christian Convery as the younger version of the protagonist is a critical narrative choice. This role provides the psychological foundation for Victor’s obsession with the boundaries between life and death.

Christian Convery: The Actor Behind Young Victor

Christian Convery was cast as Young Victor Frankenstein following a string of highly successful projects that established him as one of the most capable young actors of his generation. Born in 2009, Convery had already carried a major streaming franchise before joining the GDT Frankenstein ensemble.

Career Background and Rise to Fame

Before taking on the role of a young scientific prodigy in 19th-century Europe, Convery gained international recognition for his role as Gus in Sweet Tooth (2021–2024). His ability to convey wide-eyed innocence alongside profound trauma made him a natural fit for a character like Victor Frankenstein, whose childhood is marked by both intellectual wonder and the devastating loss of his mother.

Convery’s filmography leading up to the 2025 production included:

• Sweet Tooth: Playing a human-deer hybrid in a post-apocalyptic world.
• Cocaine Bear (2023): Demonstrating his range in dark comedy and horror-adjacent scenarios.
• One Piece (2023): Portraying a young Sanji, further proving his skill in playing the "younger self" of established adult characters.

Casting for a Guillermo del Toro Vision

Del Toro is known for his specific aesthetic and thematic requirements. He often explores the "monster" through the lens of childhood innocence or the loss thereof (as seen in Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone). Casting Convery was not merely a matter of finding a look-alike for Oscar Isaac; it was about finding an actor who could embody the intellectual intensity and emotional fragility of a child who begins to view death as a problem to be solved rather than a natural end.

The Narrative Importance of Young Victor in the 2025 Film

In many previous adaptations of Frankenstein, the childhood of Victor is either glossed over or omitted entirely to get straight to the creation of the Monster. However, the 2025 version places significant weight on Victor's origin story.

Establishing the "God Complex"

The scenes featuring Christian Convery as Young Victor are primarily set in Geneva. These sequences establish the domestic bliss of the Frankenstein family, which is eventually shattered. By focusing on Victor’s early experiments and his relationship with his mother, Caroline, the film explains the root of his "God complex." The trauma of his mother’s death serves as the catalyst for his rejection of natural law. Convery’s performance highlights the transition from a curious child to an obsessive adolescent, providing a bridge to Isaac’s manic adult iteration.

Parallels with the Monster

A key theme in del Toro’s adaptation is the parallel between the creator and the creature. By showing Victor as a child, the film reminds the audience that Victor, too, was once "created" and nurtured—a stark contrast to the Monster, who is born into adult size without the benefit of a childhood. The vulnerability Convery brings to the screen makes Victor’s later coldness and rejection of his "son" (the Monster) feel even more tragic and hypocritical.

The Full Cast of Frankenstein (2025)

To understand the context of Christian Convery's role, one must look at the powerhouse ensemble Guillermo del Toro assembled for this production. The film features a mix of seasoned veterans and rising stars, each bringing a specific Gothic intensity to the screen.

Replacing Andrew Garfield

It is worth noting that the production saw a significant casting change early on. Originally, Andrew Garfield was set to play the Monster. However, due to scheduling conflicts resulting from the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, he had to depart the project. Jacob Elordi stepped into the role, a move that shifted the dynamic of the cast to a younger, more physically imposing version of the creature. This change made the "Young Victor" sequences even more vital, as they provided the necessary historical weight to ground the younger leading man.

Production and Creative Context

The 2025 Frankenstein was produced by Netflix and featured a signature del Toro crew. The film's production design and cinematography are central to why the "Young Victor" scenes feel so distinct from the rest of the movie.

Filming Locations and Visual Style

Filming took place across several locations, including the United Kingdom and Canada. For the Geneva-based sequences involving Christian Convery, the production utilized historical European locations to capture the Romantic-era aesthetic. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen, a frequent del Toro collaborator, used a warmer, softer palette for these early scenes to contrast with the cold, harsh, and clinical blues of the later laboratory and Arctic sequences.

Adherence to Mary Shelley’s Novel

Unlike the 1931 Universal film, which largely ignored Victor’s backstory, the 2025 film is a more faithful adaptation of the structure of Mary Shelley’s novel. The novel is told through layers of narration (Walton, Victor, and the Monster). By including Convery as Young Victor, del Toro preserves the "biographical" feel of Victor’s narrative, where he explains to Captain Walton how his early life and education led him to his ruinous path.

Why This Casting Matters for the Genre

The casting of Christian Convery as a young version of a legendary literary figure signals a trend in Gothic cinema: the exploration of the "prodigy" as a source of horror.

1. Humanizing the Mad Scientist: By spending time with Victor as a child, the audience is forced to empathize with him before he becomes the villain of his own story.
2. Highlighting the Intellectual Horror: Convery’s scenes often involve the young Victor reading forbidden texts (like those of Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus). This emphasizes that the horror of Frankenstein is as much about dangerous ideas as it is about physical monsters.
3. The Child Actor as a Narrative Anchor: In a film filled with heavy prosthetics and grand philosophical monologues, the presence of a child actor brings a sense of grounded reality and high stakes to the domestic tragedy at the heart of the story.

Directing a Young Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro is famously collaborative with his actors. For Convery, working under del Toro meant engaging with a "Bible" of character notes that the director provides for every major role. These notes likely included sketches of Victor’s early inventions and descriptions of his internal psychological state.

According to various production interviews from 2024 and 2025, the director encouraged a level of continuity between Convery and Isaac. They reportedly spent time together during pre-production to align their mannerisms—specifically Victor’s nervous tics and his intense, unblinking focus when discussing scientific theory. This attention to detail ensures that when the film transitions from the Geneva of the past to the Ingolstadt of the future, the audience feels they are watching the same person age into their obsession.

Comparison with Previous Young Victors

Historically, the role of "Young Victor" has been minor. In Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), several young actors played Victor at different ages, but they were often used for short montages.

Christian Convery’s portrayal in 2025 is a departure from this because it is a substantial, performance-driven role. Unlike the 1994 version, which leaned heavily into the melodrama of Victor’s mother’s death, the 2025 version focuses on Victor’s intellectual alienation. Convery’s Victor is a child who finds more comfort in books and anatomy than in his peers, a trait that Christian Convery’s expressive acting style conveys with significant nuance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the 2025 Frankenstein a remake of the classic movie?

No, it is a new adaptation of the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley. While it pays homage to classic horror, it focuses more on the philosophical and psychological aspects of the book, as well as the director's unique Gothic vision, rather than replicating the 1931 Universal film.

How old was Christian Convery when he filmed Frankenstein?

Christian Convery was approximately 14 to 15 years old during the primary filming window in 2024. This age allowed him to play both the younger child versions of Victor and the adolescent version who begins his journey toward university in Ingolstadt.

Does Young Victor share scenes with the Monster?

In this adaptation, Young Victor does not share scenes with the Monster because the Monster is not created until Victor is an adult. However, the film uses clever editing to create a thematic bridge between Young Victor’s actions and the Monster’s eventual experiences, highlighting their shared isolation.

Why is Oscar Isaac playing Victor instead of the Monster?

Oscar Isaac was cast as the creator because of his ability to portray internal conflict and intellectual arrogance. The role of the Monster requires a different kind of physicality and a sense of "otherness," which the director felt Jacob Elordi was better suited for following the departure of Andrew Garfield.

Is Elizabeth Lavenza played by a younger actress too?

Yes, just as Victor is portrayed as a child, the film includes a younger version of Elizabeth Lavenza to establish her relationship with Victor from their youth. These scenes with Christian Convery and his young co-star are vital for making their later relationship (portrayed by Isaac and Mia Goth) feel earned and complex.

Final Recommendation

For those looking to fully appreciate the depth of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025), pay close attention to the opening acts featuring Christian Convery. While the spectacle of the laboratory and the creature are the film's "main events," the seeds of the tragedy are sown in these early scenes. If you are a fan of Convery's work in Sweet Tooth, you will find his performance here to be a much darker, more sophisticated turn.

To see more of the production's development and the full cast list, it is recommended to visit official film databases like IMDb or the Netflix Media Center for high-resolution galleries of the Geneva sequences.