ACTOR
Eli Roth
42 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (42)
- #001
Eli Roth writes all of his screenplays longhand, a practice he began on Quentin Tarantino's advice. Roth's handwriting is so illegible that if he ever lost his notebook, he would be the only person able to read it.
- #002
Eli Roth shot The Green Inferno (2013) in an Amazon village with no electricity or running water that could only be reached by motorboat. The village was so remote that the locals had never seen a film or television before. To get permission, Roth's producers brought in a generator, a television and a DVD player and explained to the whole village what a film was. The film they showed was Cannibal Holocaust (1980). The locals thought it was a comedy and allowed Roth and his crew to shoot there. After the screening, nearly the entire village signed up to play cannibals.
- #003
Eli Roth came up with the idea for Cabin Fever (2002) while in Iceland, where he contracted a flesh-eating disease. The film's now-famous leg-shaving scene in the bathtub is based on the time Roth shaved his face during the illness and layers of his skin came off.
- #004
Eli Roth shared almost all of the profits from the hugely successful Cabin Fever (2002) with the cast and crew members, who had received very little upfront pay for making the film.
- #005
Eli Roth cannot stand the sight of real blood and says it makes him nauseous. Film blood, however, has no effect on him.
- #006
Eli Roth suffers from psoriasis, a genetic, non-contagious skin disease that can have debilitating effects. When Roth had his first outbreak at 22, his skin was cracked and bleeding so badly that he could not walk or wear clothes. He based much of what happens in Cabin Fever (2002) on his own horrifying experiences.
- #007
Although his films are often promoted that way, Eli Roth reportedly does not take the "film by" or "an Eli Roth film" credit personally, because he believes people should be able to distinguish your work from the film itself rather than from opening titles or a poster. He believes filmmaking is a collaborative process and considers the credit disrespectful to the people who bring their own creativity to a project.
- #008
Eli Roth has asthma and is extremely allergic to cigarette smoke. Roth does not allow smoking near his sets, and if an actor smokes in a scene, Roth has to be away from the set watching on a monitor.
- #009
To qualify for The Green Inferno, Eli Roth would only see actors who agreed to get a yellow fever vaccination and shoot in the deep Amazon rainforest, with no bathrooms and surrounded by tarantulas, snakes and poisonous frogs that could kill on contact. After filming was completed, the actors and crew were dewormed.
- #010
Eli Roth is a member of the unofficial Splat Pack, a term coined by film historian Alan Jones in Total Film magazine for the wave of modern directors making brutally violent horror films. The other Splat Pack members are Alexandre Aja, Darren Lynn Bousman, Neil Marshall, Greg McLean, James Wan, Leigh Whannell and Rob Zombie.
- #011
In the days when only doctors and scientists were online, Eli Roth paid for his student films by working as an online sex operator for Penthouse magazine. Subscribers paid 30 dollars an hour to have sex with Roth and his N.Y.U. Friends thought they were spectacular Penthouse models. Roth claims these experiences inspired many of the characters he writes today.
- #012
Eli Roth was the inspiration for the character Eli, an aspiring porn director in The Girl Next Door (2004). One of the writers was friends with Cabin Fever (2002) editor Ryan Folsey and spent time in the editing room secretly writing down everything Roth said. Roth found out when a few actors he knew auditioned for the film and told him there was a character named Eli who talked just like him. Roth confirmed it with the writer, who was immediately thrown out of the editing room.
- #013
Eli Roth has reportedly said that a film series should never go past two installments and that films like The Godfather Part III (1990) and Alien³ (1992) should never have been made. Staying true to his word, he directed two "Hostel" films and has no connection to Hostel: Part III (2011) beyond the credit he wrote for designing certain characters. He also wrote a sequel to his hit film Cabin Fever (2002), but the script went unused.
- #014
During the filming of Inglourious Basterds (2009), Eli Roth wore only period-style Ted Williams uniforms off set to stay in the mindset of Donnie Donowitz.
- #015
Eli Roth is an expert on the relatively unknown scientist Nikola Tesla. Roth owns copies of every letter Tesla is known to have written, including rare letters to his family and to financiers when his projects failed. Roth shares similar obsessive-compulsive disorders to those Tesla had and has said he feels a strange connection to the forgotten scientist.
- #016
Eli Roth's first two films had a combined production budget of 6 million dollars. The worldwide box office total for Eli Roth's first two films is well over 100 million dollars. With DVD sales and rentals, total revenue from Eli Roth's first two films is over 200 million dollars. (Source: boxofficemojo.com).
- #017
Eli Roth is friends with director Chloe Nicole, also known as Chloe Nichole, who directed the X-rated Cabin Fever parody Sex Fever (2003). Chloe visited the set of Cabin Fever (2002) during filming and then directed the sexy parody without telling Roth. In Sex Fever (2003), Chloe imitated Roth's character Justin and made the director's cameo as a lost hiker, just as Roth did in Cabin Fever (2002). Roth was proud that she made the film but was frustrated that he was not invited to visit her set in return.
- #018
Eli Roth spends every summer at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York. Roth claims the beautiful old hotel, built in 1869, is a constant source of inspiration for frightening ideas. Among the mountain house's other guests is Roth's favorite author, Stephen King.
- #019
After directing only two films, Eli Roth was voted into the Fangoria Magazine Hall of Fame by his fans in June 2006, the fastest of all the directors to receive that honor.
- #020
Eli Roth's father, Sheldon Roth, is a world-renowned psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and a professor at Harvard University Medical School. His mother, Cora Roth, is a painter who has exhibited her work at O.K. and at the Harris Gallery in New York.
- #021
Eli Roth is red/brown and blue/black color blind in low light.
- #022
Eli Roth spent six years researching a project to be written for Broadway for director David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti.
- #023
Eli Roth has never lost money on a film. Cabin Fever (2002) recouped 15 times its budget theatrically, Hostel (2005) recouped 20 times its budget theatrically, and Hostel: Part II (2007), Roth's biggest-budget film to date, tripled its budget theatrically.
- #024
Eli Roth owns an Icelandic horse named Bara, which he raised at a horse farm in Selfoss, Iceland, when he was 19 years old.
- #025
Eli Roth is a shark activist and conservationist who regularly dives with sharks for the Discovery Channel's "Shark Week." He began hosting "Shark After Dark" as an opportunity to learn about sharks and get closer to them. Roth wants people to know that they are peaceful, shy, intelligent animals and not as they are depicted in films.
- #026
Eli Roth has a deadly allergy to cats and cannot live in the same house as them.
- #027
Eli Roth is considered one of the most profitable directors working in cinema today. Both of his first films earned more than five times their production costs in opening-weekend ticket revenue. Neither film had major stars, proving that Roth's name guarantees an established audience.
- #028
Eli Roth's favorite film is Cannibal Holocaust (1980), whose director, Ruggero Deodato, appeared in Roth's own film Hostel: Part II (2007). Another of his favorites is the British cult horror classic The Wicker Man (1973).
- #029
Eli Roth was named "Most Fit Director" in the June/July 2006 issue of Men's Fitness magazine, which ranked the "25 Fittest Guys" across various professions.
- #030
Eli Roth works with the "Black Jaguar White Tiger" animal rescue team in Mexico City, Mexico. The foundation has rescued more than 500 endangered lions, jaguars and tigers from various zoos and from people who bought them as pets (which is legal in Mexico).
- #031
Eli Roth earned his Screen Actors Guild card working as an extra in Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996). Although he is not credited in the film's titles, Roth appears in many scenes as Streisand's favorite student and is featured in close-ups several times. During the shoot, a producer told Roth, then 22 years old, that he resembled Streisand's son with Elliott Gould. Streisand requested that Roth be brought back for several more scenes and later waved to him from a balcony at a Giacomo Puccini concert he attended with Jeff Bridges. Clips are available on YouTube.
- #032
Eli Roth co-wrote the rewrite of Death Wish (2018) with Dean Georgaris in three weeks. Bruce Willis and MGM were so pleased with the new script that the film was greenlit and production began in July 2017.
- #033
Eli Roth's family is Ashkenazi Jewish (from Austria, Hungary, Russia and Poland).
- #034
Eli Roth founded Raw Nerve, a production company focused on making horror films, together with film directors Scott Spiegel and Boaz Yakin.
- #035
Eli Roth provided an expert commentary for Troma's DVD release of Blood Sucking Freaks (1976).
- #036
Eli Roth received the Art Award at the 2011 Ischia Global Film and Music Festival and gave an acceptance speech. Roth had not planned to sing, but the band began playing during the awards ceremony and he was called to the stage during the music. Roth dedicated his award to his favorite Italian comedy star, Bombolo, and got the crowd in Ischia to chant Bombolo's name on the beach.
- #037
Eli Roth won a Student Academy Award in 1995 with N.Y.U. His thesis film was Restaurant Dogs (1994).
- #038
Eli Roth spent a year attached to direct Baywatch (2017) and wanted to make an absurd comedy, which he co-wrote with Richard Kelly. The project stalled at Paramount and Roth and the producers parted ways very amicably; Roth received the main "co-producer" credit for his year of work on the film.
- #039
Eli Roth is the brother of Adam J. Roth and Gabriel Roth and the son of Sheldon Roth and Cora Roth.
- #040
Eli Roth was the guest of honor at the 2011 Neuchâtel International Film Festival.
- #041
Eli Roth attended film school at New York University with Jerry O'Connell.
- #042
In December 2023, Eli Roth was honored at Fondazione Prada in Milan for his work. After the talk, Roth screened "Thanksgiving" and chose Juan Piquer Simon's "Pieces" (1982) to pair with it as a nod to his favorite slasher film from his childhood.
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