Timothée Chalamet

Biography

Timothée Chalamet grew up in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen, summered with his grandfather in the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, and spent most of middle school trying to work out exactly what accent he was supposed to have. He decided early: both. He attended LaGuardia High School, the performing-arts school of New York, alongside Ansel Elgort and Azealia Banks.

He was in Homeland before he could vote. He was in Interstellar at eighteen. At twenty-one he starred in Call Me by Your Name. Luca Guadagnino's film opened to rapture. Chalamet became the third-youngest Best Actor nominee in Academy Awards history. He delivered an acceptance speech that did not happen — Gary Oldman won — but a generation's cinema had a new face anyway.

The filmography since is almost absurdly eclectic. Greta Gerwig's Little Women. Denis Villeneuve's Dune and Dune: Part Two — a billion-dollar franchise reboot. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch. Wonka, a surprise box-office hit. Then, at the peak of his movie-star marketability, a three-year project learning Bob Dylan's guitar, harmonica, and voice to play him in A Complete Unknown, which earned a second Oscar nomination and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor.

He speaks fluent French. He produces his own films through Sunny March alongside Ridley Scott. He has a reputation on set for arriving early and researching obsessively — he was said to carry a copy of Patti Smith's M Train through the Dune shoot.

The most striking thing is how deliberate he is about refusal. He has not taken the obvious Marvel or DC paycheck. He has not taken the franchise romcom. The films he makes are the films he wants to make, and enough of them have landed to make this look less like caution and more like a plan. The plan is working.