Timothée Chalamet

• 1. Introduction

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  Director Paul King cast Timothée Chalamet as Willy Wonka without an audition. King had watched Chalamet's high school performances on YouTube and decided that they proved his singing and dancing. Chalamet is an American and French actor born in 1995, and by then he had already been nominated for an Academy Award. A casting decision built on teenage stage footage is an odd way to hire a star. So how did a boy from a subsidized artists' building in Manhattan become an actor that directors write parts for? What made critics reach for comparisons to James Dean? And why does Chalamet call one of his biggest hits the riskiest thing he ever made?

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• 2. Hell's Kitchen Roots

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  Manhattan Plaza is a federally subsidized building in Hell's Kitchen, reserved for artists. Timothée Hal Chalamet was born on the 27th of December 1995 and grew up in a rental apartment there with his parents. His older sister, Pauline Chalamet, also became an actress. Their mother, Nicole Flender, is a third-generation New Yorker with half Russian Jewish and half Austrian Jewish roots. She is a real estate agent and a former Broadway dancer. She also earned a bachelor's degree in French from Yale University and has taught both French and dance. Filmmakers and producers Rodman Flender and Amy Lippman, a married couple, are his uncle and aunt on that side.

  Marc Chalamet, his father, is a New York correspondent for Le Parisien and an editor for UNICEF. He comes from Nîmes, in France, and has Protestant heritage. Chalamet's paternal grandmother moved to France but was originally from Brantford, Ontario. Chalamet speaks English and French and holds both American and French citizenship through his father. His sister once described the family as "very middle-class".

  Every summer brought him to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small French village two hours from Lyon, where his paternal grandparents lived. He has said those years left him with cross-cultural ambiguities about who he was.

  School in New York was less happy. He went to PS 87 William T. Sherman School and MS 245 The Computer School. He then moved into the selective Delta program at MS 54 Booker T. Washington Middle School. He called it miserable, because its demanding academics left no room for creativity.

  The spark came in 2008, when Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight inspired him to pursue acting. Chalamet applied to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. His middle school record hurt him in the interview, and he was rejected there. The drama teacher who later taught him in sophomore year was so impressed by the audition that he insisted on admitting him anyway. The teacher said: "I gave him the highest score I've ever given a kid auditioning." Chalamet has described getting in as a turning point in how he valued acting.

  At LaGuardia he played the Emcee in Cabaret and Oscar Lindquist in Sweet Charity. He graduated in 2013 and is also a YoungArts alumnus. For a year he dated a fellow student, Lourdes Leon, the daughter of Madonna.

  At 17 he enrolled at Columbia University, majored in cultural anthropology, and lived in Hartley Hall. Fresh from filming Interstellar, he struggled to fit in there. He transferred to the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University so he could pursue acting more freely, and he moved to Concourse in the Bronx. He eventually left NYU to concentrate on acting and avoid student debt.

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• 3. Small Parts, Big Stages

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  A murder victim on Law & Order in 2009 was Chalamet's television debut. Before that, he had appeared in commercials and in two horror short films, Sweet Tooth and Clown. The same year brought a minor role in the television film Loving Leah.

  In 2011 he made his stage debut Off-Broadway in The Talls, a coming-of-age comedy set in the 1970s. He played a sexually curious 12-year-old, and the chief theatre critic of the New York Daily News wrote: "Chalamet hilariously captures a tween's awakening curiosities about sex."

  In 2012 he took recurring roles in Royal Pains and in Homeland. On Homeland he played Finn Walden, the rebellious son of the Vice President. He and the rest of the cast earned a SAG Award nomination for Best Ensemble.

  His feature film debut came in 2014, in a minor role in Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children. That same year he played Tom Cooper, the son of Matthew McConaughey's character, in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. The film grossed over $700 million worldwide. A decade later he called it his favorite film he had made up to that point. At the time, though, he was disappointed, because it had not boosted his career the way he assumed it would. He also had a supporting role in Worst Friends in 2014, a comedy with a limited theatrical release.

  The 2015 slate was uneven. One & Two, a fantasy thriller, premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and drew mixed reviews. In The Adderall Diaries he played the teenage version of James Franco's character, Stephen Elliott. His last film of the year was the Christmas comedy Love the Coopers, where he played Charlie Cooper, the sullen grandson of the characters played by Diane Keaton and John Goodman. Reviews were negative.

  In 2016 playwright and director John Patrick Shanley and producer Scott Rudin handpicked him for Prodigal Son at Manhattan Theatre Club. Chalamet played Jim Quinn, a younger version of Shanley himself. Quinn is a misfit Bronx kid at a prestigious New Hampshire prep school in 1963. The performance won him the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play and a Drama League Award nomination.

  He also co-starred opposite Lily Rabe in Julia Hart's Miss Stevens as the troubled student Billy Mitman. Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter called his work "compelling" and "startling". Stephen Holden of The New York Times compared him to James Dean. By then Chalamet had spent three years attached to a film adaptation of a novel by André Aciman.

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• 4. The Breakthrough Roles

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  Elio Perlman, a young man living in Italy in the 1980s, falls in love with Oliver, a university student staying with his family. Chalamet played Elio in Luca Guadagnino's Call Me by Your Name, with Armie Hammer as Oliver. To prepare, he learned to speak Italian and to play piano and guitar. The film premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim, and reviewers singled out his performance.

  Olly Richards of Empire wrote: "In a film in which every performance is terrific, Chalamet makes the rest look like they're acting. He alone would make the film worth watching". Jon Frosch of The Hollywood Reporter said no performance that year felt as "emotionally, physically and intellectually alive". Frosch placed Chalamet on the magazine's list of the year's best performances, and Time and The New York Times also featured him on such lists.

  He won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Performer and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. He received Best Actor nominations from the Critics' Choice Movie Awards, the Golden Globes, the Actor Awards, BAFTA and the Academy Awards. At the Oscars, he became the third-youngest Best Actor nominee. No one younger had been nominated since Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms in 1939.

  His second film of 2017 was Hot Summer Nights, Elijah Bynum's directorial debut. Chalamet played Daniel, a gawky teenager swept into a summer of drug dealing. The film drew mixed reviews, but K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair found something special in the "sensitivity" of his performance.

  In Greta Gerwig's solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, he played Kyle Scheible, a rich hipster in a band and a love interest of Saoirse Ronan's title character. Ty Burr of The Boston Globe called his performance "hilarious". He closed the year in the western Hostiles, as a young soldier named Philippe DeJardin opposite Christian Bale.

  In 2018 he joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. That year he also played Nic Sheff in Beautiful Boy, directed by Felix Van Groeningen. Nic is a teenager addicted to methamphetamine, with a strained bond to his father, the journalist David Sheff, played by Steve Carell. The film draws on two memoirs: the elder Sheff's Beautiful Boy and Nic Sheff's Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.

  A Variety critic compared the role with Elio, describing Nic as "skittery and self-involved" next to the "marvelous directness" of the earlier part. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times went further and wrote that "he might be the male actor of his generation." Chalamet earned Best Supporting Actor nominations at the Golden Globes, the Actor Awards and BAFTA.

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• 5. Controversy and Costume Drama

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  The Me Too movement revived a 1992 sexual abuse allegation against Woody Allen, just as Chalamet appeared in Allen's romantic comedy A Rainy Day in New York. Chalamet said contractual obligations prevented him from answering questions about working with Allen. The Huffington Post obtained a copy of his contract, which disputed that claim.

  He donated his salary to Time's Up, the LGBT Center of New York and RAINN, and he did not promote the film. In his 2020 memoir Apropos of Nothing, Allen claimed that Chalamet told Allen's sister Letty Aronson he had denounced the director only to improve his chances at an Academy Award for Call Me by Your Name.

  In The King, David Michôd's Netflix period drama drawn from several Shakespeare plays known as the Henriad, Chalamet played Henry V of England. The character is a prince who becomes king as a young man. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote that Chalamet "does robust work, straightening his lanky posture as he goes, rising up into the role like a man ascendant".

  Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women gave him his third release of 2019. He played the lovestruck teenager Theodore "Laurie" Laurence in Gerwig's adaptation, his second collaboration with Gerwig and with Ronan. Critics acclaimed the film. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised his "innate charm and poignant vulnerability". Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post singled out his "languidly graceful" performance and its "playful physicality".

  In 2020 he hosted an episode of the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live for the first time.

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• 6. Becoming a Leading Man

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  Wes Anderson wrote the student revolutionary in The French Dispatch with Chalamet in mind. The film had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Brianna Zigler of Paste found him "perfectly attuned to Anderson's highly specified wavelength".

  That year he also took the lead as Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of the science fiction novel Dune, which premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. Villeneuve said Chalamet was his only choice: "I needed that for the audience to believe this young man will be able to lead a whole planet." David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter praised his "magnetic pensiveness". Lewis Knight of the Daily Mirror wrote that he had completed his "ascension to Hollywood leading man status". Dune earned over $400 million worldwide, making it one of the year's highest-grossing films.

  Chalamet later offered mild criticism of himself. Having come off the naturalistic Beautiful Boy and Call Me by Your Name, he said: "I felt kind of thrown by the futurism." The scale of the production, he added, left him intimidated.

  He closed 2021 as a skater punk in Adam McKay's Netflix ensemble comedy Don't Look Up. Reviews were mixed, though Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times found him "sweetly sincere" in a small part. The cast was nominated for an Actor Award.

  Bones and All reunited him with Guadagnino in 2022. He and Taylor Russell played cannibal drifters on the road, and the film premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival. It was Chalamet's first production venture, and he credited Guadagnino with mentoring him through it. Leila Latif of IndieWire praised his "near-peerless ability to gently weep". That year he also voiced a character in the Netflix adult animated musical special Entergalactic.

  He hosted Saturday Night Live a second time in 2023, then starred in the musical Wonka for a reported fee of $9 million. He sang seven songs for the soundtrack. Derek Smith of Slant Magazine said he gave Wonka "a warmth and tenderness". The role brought another Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. The film grossed over $634 million worldwide and ranked as the eighth highest-grossing film of 2023.

  Chalamet says he took the job partly as a fan of King's Paddington films. After serious dramas, he viewed it as an untraditional step and as "kinda punk rock", though he does not think audiences read it that way.

  Dune: Part Two arrived in 2024. Variety reported that the box-office success of Wonka and Dune: Part Two established him as a major star. Soon afterward he signed a first look deal with Warner Bros. to star in and produce more films. Dune: Part Two grossed over $714 million worldwide, his highest-grossing starring role. It was the seventh highest-grossing film of 2024.

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• 7. Dylan and Table Tennis

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  Forty Bob Dylan songs fill the soundtrack of A Complete Unknown, and Chalamet sang them all. He also played guitars and harmonicas, in a biopic directed by James Mangold. The film was shot and released in 2024, five years after he began preparing for it. He first met the producers shortly after finishing Call Me By Your Name, when they were struck by his versatility and his physical resemblance to Dylan. Dylan himself responded positively to the casting.

  On set, Chalamet stayed aloof, and the call sheet listed him as "Bob Dylan". He did not consider this method acting. Caryn James of BBC Culture called him "brilliant here and completely believable, better than the film itself".

  The role brought Best Actor nominations from the Academy, BAFTA and the Golden Globes. He won the Actor Award for Best Actor at age 29, the youngest ever to do so. His work on the soundtrack earned a Grammy Award nomination.

  In 2025 he hosted Saturday Night Live a third time. He also appeared as the show's musical guest, performing three Dylan songs. He was the first non-professional singer to fill that slot in 30 years.

  Josh Safdie first approached him about Marty Supreme in 2018 and said he wrote it specifically for him. Chalamet produced the sports film and played a table tennis player inspired by Marty Reisman. He began taking ping-pong lessons and practiced while filming other projects.

  Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent wrote that he is "truly one of our greatest talents" and compared his energy to Al Pacino's. David Ehrlich of IndieWire said he "makes one of the most colossal movie performances of the 21st century seem as natural as a lay-up".

  The film earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and, as producer, Best Picture. He became the youngest male actor nominated three times in the lead category since Marlon Brando in 1954. He is also the youngest person ever nominated for both acting and producing in the same year. He collected a ninth Actor Award nomination and a sixth BAFTA nomination. He was also the youngest ever winner of the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor and of the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.

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• 8. Style, Sport and Next Roles

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  Vogue named Chalamet the most influential man in fashion in 2019, noting that he styles himself. It credited him with working the boundary between traditional masculinity and femininity. The New York Times grouped him among what it called "noodle boys", a "sinewy" type that offered an "alternative image of white masculinity". In 2020 GQ ranked him the best-dressed man in the world, and in 2023 its readers voted him Most Stylish Man of the Year. In 2018 he had appeared on Forbes's 30 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment list.

  He co-chaired the 2021 Met Gala with Billie Eilish, Naomi Osaka and Amanda Gorman. The event accompanied the Costume Institute's exhibit In America: A Lexicon of Fashion. He then became a brand ambassador for Cartier. With designer Haider Ackermann, he made a hoodie whose proceeds all went to Afghanistan Libre, a French organization defending the rights of women in Afghanistan. They first met in Paris in 2017, when Chalamet's agent Brian Swardstrom asked Ackermann to style him for his first red carpet, at the Berlin International Film Festival.

  At the 94th Academy Awards he wore a sequined Louis Vuitton jacket from a womenswear collection, with no shirt. W declared that he had "rewritten the gentleman's Oscar dress code for good". In October 2022 he became the first solo male cover star of British Vogue's print edition.

  From 2023 to 2026 he was the face of Bleu de Chanel, succeeding the late French actor Gaspard Ulliel. Mario Sorrenti shot the campaign, and Martin Scorsese directed a campaign film that premiered in May 2024. Chalamet reportedly received $35 million. His Wonka role inspired a costume necklace with Cartier and a pair of Nike Dunk Lows. In 2025 he became the first global ambassador for Lucid Motors, and in December he added a verse to a remix of EsDeeKid's "4 Raws".

  In 2026, speaking in a CNN and Variety town hall with Matthew McConaughey, he said he would not want to work in ballet or opera. The remark drew criticism from those communities, while some outlets defended it as recognizing the struggles of those art forms. Later that year he announced a partnership with the watchmaker Urban Jürgensen, where he will be creative advisor with a minority stake.

  Offscreen, Chalamet splits his time between New York and California. He rarely discusses his romantic life, though he has been with Kylie Jenner since April 2023. As a teenager he wanted to be a professional soccer player, and he is a lifelong supporter of France's Saint-Étienne. His childhood friend Alex Muyl went on to play professionally. At 15 he ran a YouTube channel called ModdedController360, showing off customized Xbox 360 controllers. He names the rapper Kid Cudi as his biggest career inspiration, alongside actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Joaquin Phoenix.

  Dune: Part Three, due in 2026, closes the trilogy. Chalamet says he played Paul more intensely this time: "On Dune 3, as opposed to the first movie, I came out early and studied the control panel (of the ornithopter)." He has said he wanted to know what each button did. After that he is set to reunite with Mangold on High-Side, a motocross heist film that would reportedly pay him $25 million.

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