When I met Timothée Chalamet seven years ago, in his first flush of fame, I wrote: “I’ve never met anyone as delighted to be alive as he is right now.” What a torrent of energy he was in that bar in London in early 2018, celebrating Oscar and Bafta nominations for Call Me by Your Name and Lady Bird, his breakthrough films.
He was funny, frank, full of beans; but unsatisfied. “I don’t want to be known for something that happened when I was young,” he told me — he was 22. “This is hopefully just the start. There had better be more.”
He turns 30 this month and that “more” has, clearly, been achieved. There is no brighter star in Hollywood — the bigger half of a TikTok-friendly power couple with Kim Kardashian’s sister Kylie Jenner. Chalamet started out this year as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown and ends it as Marty Supreme, a biopic of sorts about a table tennis hustler who was a sensation in his own head, based on the real life ping-pong champion Marty Reisman. I saw the film last week and, more than ever, the Chalamet I met mirrored the man up on screen. He is relentless in Marty Supreme and, also, relentless in promoting Marty Supreme — and himself.
Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner at the Los Angeles premiere of Marty Supreme
MONICA SCHIPPER/GETTY IMAGES
“This is probably my best performance,” he has said about Marty Supreme. “And it’s been like seven, eight years that I have been handing in really committed top-of-the-line performances — I don’t want people to take it for granted … This is really some top-level shit.”
You never hear actors talk like this. Chalamet is saying out loud, arrogantly, what we all know actors say in private WhatsApp groups anyway. That “top-level shit” includes Call Me by Your Name, Little Women, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, Dune, Don’t Look Up, Dune: Part Two, A Complete Unknown and Marty Supreme, and while “top-level” for the overwrought addiction drama Beautiful Boy and forgettable Wonka is a stretch, Chalamet talks about acting in a way that would make his beloved braggadocio rap idols — he is a huge hip-hop fan — proud. Frankly, it is a breath of fresh air amid the luvviness.
Earlier this year, when winning a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award for his role as Dylan, the actor said: “I’m in pursuit of greatness — I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats … I am as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando and Viola Davis as by Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there.” He treats acting like sport, and not everybody is pleased.
As Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown
REX
“Was Chalamet’s SAG speech endearingly honest, or manosphere-enabled overconfidence?” ran one particularly reactionary piece in Vogue, but that opinion is not unusual in an industry where one is always meant to be thankful.
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How good is he? Chalamet was born in New York in 1995. His mother was a dancer turned estate agent and his French father was a correspondent for Le Parisien. He grew up in a “super-untethered and beautiful” neighbourhood, taking roles in TV shows such as Homeland. He enrolled at Columbia University but quit to focus on acting. He did not always have it his way — he auditioned for, but was not cast in, Manchester by the Sea and the Spider-Man role that went to Tom Holland. But his role as young Elio, coming to terms with his sexuality and making love to a peach in Luca Guadagnino’s sensational, sensuous Call Me by Your Name made him. In 2018, at 22, he was the youngest best actor nominee at the Oscars since 1944.
In Call Me By Your Name in 2017
ALAMY
Guadagnino remembers him as “cunning, smart, inspiring, quick and witty”, mentioning both his “humbleness and rigour” as he set out, but then came the sort of accolade that can go to a young man’s head. Greta Gerwig, who directed him in Lady Bird and Little Women, said Chalamet was “a young Christian Bale, crossed with young Daniel Day-Lewis with a sprinkle of young Leonardo DiCaprio, and then raised speaking French in Manhattan and given a Mensa-level IQ and a love of hip-hop.”
Denis Villeneuve said there was no “plan B” when it came to casting the lead role in his sci-fi epic Dune — partly because Chalamet’s character, Paul Atreides is at first callow but later a leader. “So I needed charisma — and Timothée has that insane rock star quality,” Villeneuve said.
Chalamet in Dune: Part Two
ALAMY
That rock or, indeed, rap star quality has never been more apparent. He might not win best actor at various forthcoming awards — DiCaprio is a major rival for One Battle After Another — but he will certainly take “most memorable”. In Marty Supreme, Chalamet’s character invents an orange table tennis ball and, last week, the actor and Jenner appeared on the red carpet adorned in vibrant orange. He is an unashamed A-lister who is desperate to make a splash.
Earlier this year, he rode a Lime bike to a premiere. He once went to a Chalamet lookalike contest. Last month he was in an 18-minute spoof marketing video for Marty Supreme, pegged around the idea that Chalamet is great. Which raises the question: is this all an act? Is Chalamet strutting around with the egotism of pre-Maga Kanye West marketing a movie about believing your own hype? Perhaps. But then I think back to when we met. He was very clear then that he wanted more — and now he has it. Will it be enough?