Timothée Chalamet

Timothée Hal Chalamet (/ˈtɪməθi ˈʃæləmeɪ/ TIM-ə-thee SHAL-ə-may, [timɔte ʃalamɛ]; born December 27, 1995) is an American actor. He has received several accolades throughout his career, including nominations for an Academy Award, three BAFTA Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, and four Critics' Choice Movie Awards. Chalamet began his acting career in short films and commercials, before appearing in the television drama series Homeland in 2012. Two years later, he made his feature film debut in the comedy-drama Men, Women & Children and subsequently appeared in the science-fiction film Interstellar.

Chalamet's breakthrough came in 2017 with his role as Elio Perlman in Luca Guadagnino's coming-of-age romantic drama Call Me by Your Name, after which he appeared in the coming-of-age films Hot Summer Nights and Lady Bird as well as the western film Hostiles. His performance in Call Me by Your Name earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor; at 22 years old, it made him the third-youngest nominee in the category. He then played Nic Sheff in the autobiographical drama Beautiful Boy (2018), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Film Award. In 2019, Chalamet starred as Henry V of England and Theodore "Laurie" Laurence in the period dramas The King and Little Women, respectively. In 2021, he starred as the lead role of Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve's epic science fiction film Dune and in the ensemble cast of Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch.

On stage, Chalamet starred in John Patrick Shanley's autobiographical play Prodigal Son in 2016, for which he won a Lucille Lortel Award and garnered a nomination for a Drama League Award.

Early life and education

Timothée Hal Chalamet was born on December 27, 1995, in New York City, and grew up in the federally subsidized artists' building Manhattan Plaza, in Hell's Kitchen. He has an older sister, Pauline Chalamet (born in 1992), who is an actress. His mother, Nicole Flender, is a third-generation New Yorker of half Russian Jewish and half Austrian Jewish descent. She is a real estate broker at The Corcoran Group, and a former Broadway dancer; Flender earned her bachelor's degree in French from Yale University, and has been a language and dance teacher. His French father, Marc Chalamet, is an editor for the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and former New York correspondent for Le Parisien. Marc is from Nîmes and is of a Protestant Christian background. Timothée's paternal grandmother, who had moved to France, was originally Canadian. On his mother's side, he is a nephew of husband-and-wife filmmakers and producers Amy Lippman and Rodman Flender.

Chalamet is fluent in both English and French, and holds dual United States and French citizenship. Growing up, Chalamet spent summers in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small French village two hours away from Lyon, at the home of his paternal grandparents. He stated that his time in France led to cross-cultural identity issues. "Once I was there, I became the French version of myself," he told La Presse. "I was completely imbued with the culture, and I even dreamed in French." His childhood dream was to become a professional soccer player, saying, "I was a coach at a soccer camp in France. I coached six to ten-year-olds when I was around thirteen."

Chalamet attended PS 87 William T. Sherman School for elementary school, and later the selective Delta program at MS 54 Booker T. Washington Middle School, which he described as a "miserable three years" due to the lack of a creative outlet within the school's academically rigorous environment. His acceptance into Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts was a turning point in his appreciation for acting. He stated, "I had some excellent teachers and really fell in love with it. I saw that it could be and should be treated as a craft." Harry Shifman, his sophomore-year drama teacher at LaGuardia, was so impressed by his audition that he insisted on Chalamet's acceptance into the school even though he had been rejected in the interview (due to his middle school record), saying "I gave him the highest score I've ever given a kid auditioning." During high school, Chalamet dated Madonna's daughter Lourdes ("Lola") Leon, a fellow student, for a year. He starred in school musicals as Emcee in Cabaret and Oscar Lindquist in Sweet Charity, graduating in 2013. He is also a YoungArts alumnus.

After high school, Chalamet, then 17, attended Columbia University for one year, majoring in cultural anthropology and was a resident of Hartley Hall. He later transferred to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study to pursue his acting career more freely, having found it difficult to assimilate to Columbia directly after filming Interstellar. Upon leaving Columbia, Chalamet moved to Concourse, Bronx.

Career

Early roles and acting background (2008–2016)

As a child, Chalamet appeared in several commercials and acted in two horror short films called Sweet Tooth and Clown before making his television debut on an episode of the long-running police procedural series Law & Order (2009), playing a murder victim. He followed this with a minor role in the television film Loving Leah (2009). In 2011, he made his stage debut in the Off-Broadway play The Talls, a coming-of-age comedy set in the 1970s, in which he played a sexually curious 12-year-old Nicholas. The chief theatre critic of New York Daily News wrote "Chalamet hilariously captures a tween's awakening curiosities about sex." In 2012, he had recurring roles in the drama series Royal Pains and the spy-thriller series Homeland, in which he played Finn Walden, the rebellious son of the Vice President. Along with the rest of the cast, Chalamet was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

In 2014, he made his feature film debut in a minor role in Jason Reitman's Men, Women & Children. Later that year, he played the role of Tom Cooper, the son of Matthew McConaughey's character, in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. The film received positive reviews, with critics praising the cast's performances, and grossed over $675 million worldwide. Also in 2014, Chalamet played the younger version of the co-lead role in Worst Friends, a comedy which had a limited theatrical release and received positive reviews. In 2015, Chalamet co-starred in Andrew Droz Palermo's fantasy-thriller One & Two, playing the role of Zac, a son who along with his sister, begins to explore unusual abilities and dark family secrets when their mother falls ill. The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it received mainly mixed reviews, before its limited theatrical release. His next role was playing the teenage version of James Franco's character, Stephen Elliott, in Pamela Romanowsky's The Adderall Diaries. In his final role of 2015, Chalamet played Charlie Cooper, the sullen grandson of Diane Keaton and John Goodman's characters in the Christmas comedy Love the Coopers, which received negative reviews.

Chalamet noted a period of time after Interstellar—a role he imagined would have served as a career breakout— in which his auditions were resoundingly unsuccessful, including such works as The Neon Demon, The Theory of Everything, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and White Boy Rick.

In February 2016, he starred as Jim Quinn in the autobiographical play Prodigal Son at Manhattan Theatre Club. Handpicked by its playwright and director John Patrick Shanley and producer Scott Rudin, Chalamet portrayed a younger Shanley, a misfit Bronx kid in a prestigious New Hampshire prep school set in 1963. He received rave reviews for his performance and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play, and was nominated for the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance. Chalamet also co-starred opposite Lily Rabe in Julia Hart's Miss Stevens as the troubled student Billy Mitman. Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "He is compelling even when he's just watching silently and reacting to the other characters. When he has to explode with rage or manic energy, he's startling. And in the drama competition, his reading of a climactic speech from Death of a Salesman suggests that this young actor has a bright future in many different media—I don't know if I've ever seen a better performance of that speech." Stephen Holden of The New York Times compared him to James Dean.

Breakthrough (2017–present)

After being attached to the project for three years, Chalamet starred in Luca Guadagnino's Call Me by Your Name, based on the novel of the same name, by André Aciman. The story revolves around Elio Perlman, a young man living in Italy during the 1980s, who falls in love with Oliver (Armie Hammer), a university student who has come to stay with his family. In preparation for the role, Chalamet learned to speak Italian, as well as to play the piano and guitar. Call Me by Your Name premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim; critics particularly highlighted Chalamet's 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 stated that no performance during the year "felt as emotionally, physically and intellectually alive" and included Chalamet in the magazine's list of the best performances of the year. Time also called Chalamet's performance one of the best of the year, while The New York Times featured him on its list of the best actors of the year. For his performance in the film, he won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, and received nominations for the Critics' Choice Movie Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, BAFTA Award, and Academy Award, all for Best Actor. He is the third-youngest person in history to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor as well as the youngest since 19-year-old Mickey Rooney in Babes in Arms in 1939.

In his second film of 2017, Chalamet played Daniel, a gawky teenager who gets swept up in the drug-dealing business over the course of a summer, in Elijah Bynum's directorial debut, Hot Summer Nights. It received a limited theatrical release in July 2018 and generated mixed reviews from critics, though Chalamet's performance received praise from K. Austin Collins of Vanity Fair, who called the "sensitivity" in his performance "something special". Later that year, he played Kyle Scheible, a rich hipster in a band and a love interest of Saoirse Ronan's character in Lady Bird, the solo directorial debut of Greta Gerwig. Critics praised the ensemble cast, with Ty Burr of The Boston Globe taking particular note of Chalamet's "hilarious" performance. December saw the release of Chalamet's final film of 2017, Scott Cooper's western Hostiles, in which he played soldier Philippe DeJardin, alongside Christian Bale.

In 2018, Chalamet joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Later that year, Chalamet portrayed teenage drug addict Nic Sheff, a teenager addicted to methamphetamine who shares a strained relationship with his father, the journalist David Sheff (portrayed by Steve Carell), in the drama Beautiful Boy. The film is directed by Felix Van Groeningen and is based on a pair of memoirs—the elder Sheff's memoir of the same name and Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff. Owen Glieberman of Variety drew comparisons with Chalamet's performance in Call Me by Your Name, stating that "Nic, [whom he portrays] in his muffled millennial James Dean way, [as] skittery and self-involved" is a transformation from the "marvelous directness" he displayed in the role of Elio Perlman. He received nominations for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and BAFTA award ceremonies.

The following year, Chalamet starred in Woody Allen's romantic comedy A Rainy Day in New York. Due to an allegation of sexual abuse against Allen, Chalamet donated his salary to the charities Time's Up, LGBT Center of New York, and RAINN. He did not promote the film, although it ironically became the number one film in the world (outside of the United States, where it was not distributed). Next, he portrayed Henry V of England, a young prince who unwittingly ascends the English Throne, in David Michôd's Netflix period drama The King, based on several plays from Shakespeare's Henriad. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair wrote, "Chalamet does robust work, straightening his lanky posture as he goes, rising up into the role like a man ascendant". In his third film release of 2019, Chalamet portrayed Theodore "Laurie" Laurence, a lovestruck teenager, in Little Women, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel of the same name. Marking his second collaboration with Gerwig and Ronan, the film was acclaimed by critics, two of whom—Peter Travers of Rolling Stone and Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post—also praised Chalamet's performance; with Travers noting that the actor portrays the role with "innate charm and poignant vulnerability," while Hornaday highlighted his "languidly graceful" performance and its "playful physicality." Chalamet hosted the December 12, 2020, episode of the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, featuring musical guest Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

In 2021, Chalamet portrayed a student revolutionary in Wes Anderson's ensemble comedy-drama The French Dispatch. The film had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it generated positive reviews. Anderson wrote the role with Chalamet in mind saying "I had seen Timmy in Lady Bird and Call Me by Your Name and I never had the inconvenience of ever thinking of anybody else for this role even for a second". Brianna Zigler of Paste Magazine wrote that "Chalamet [...] could not have been more perfectly attuned to Anderson’s highly specified wavelength and critic Peter Travers stated that Chalamet and his co-star Frances McDormand "have great inter-generational fun with their bizarro coupling. So will you." He also starred as the main character Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve's film adaptation of the science fiction novel Dune, which premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. Villeneuve stated that Chalamet was his first and only choice to play the role of Paul Atreides saying "Timothée has that kind of charismatic power. And I needed that for the audience to believe this young man will be able to raise and lead an army, and then lead a whole planet." Dune received positive reviews with The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney praising "Chalamet, whose magnetic pensiveness gives the coming-of-age element some heart" and Lewis Knight of Daily Mirror wrote that "Timothee Chalamet completes his ascension to Hollywood leading man status, capturing the difficult character of Paul. Simultaneously boyish but weighed down by fate, in touch with his femininity but still a man’s man, Chalamet brings charisma and gravitas in spades".

Upcoming projects

Chalamet will appear in Adam McKay's ensemble Netflix original comedy film Don't Look Up, as well as star in the romance-horror film Bones & All, reuniting with Luca Guadagnino. Chalamet is slated to make his London stage debut at The Old Vic Theatre as Leo Joseph-Connell in the play 4000 Miles by Amy Herzog, co-starring Eileen Atkins as Vera. Originally scheduled for April 2020, it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. He is also set to portray singer Bob Dylan in a biopic called Going Electric, directed by James Mangold, but due to complications from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, production of the film has been postponed. Chalamet is slated to star in Find Me, a film adaptation of the 2019 novel of the same name as well as a sequel to the film Call Me by Your Name, reprising the role of Elio. In May 2021, he was cast to portray young Willy Wonka in the musical film Wonka, directed by Paul King, which began filming in October 2021 and is scheduled for a March 2023 release. In October 2021, it was announced that he will be reprising the role of Paul Atreides in the sequel to Dune, titled Dune: Part Two, which is scheduled to release on October 20, 2023.

Public image

Several media publications consider Chalamet to be among the most talented actors of his generation. Remarking upon his performance in Beautiful Boy, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "he might be the male actor of his generation". In 2018, he appeared in Forbes's 30 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment list.

Chalamet has been described by the media as a sex symbol and a fashion icon, with his hair, jawline, and androgynous looks highlighted as his trademarks. Vogue named him the most influential man in fashion in 2019, and credits him for continuing "to ply the boundary between traditional masculinity and femininity" writing "those fashion choices are all the more impressive considering that Chalamet styles himself". In 2020, GQ ranked him as the best-dressed man in the world. Chalamet served as one of the co-chairs of the 2021 Met Gala alongside singer Billie Eilish, professional tennis player Naomi Osaka, and poet Amanda Gorman. The event was part of the Costume Institute's exhibit In America: A Lexicon of Fashion. In September 2021, Chalamet became a brand ambassador for Cartier.

Acting credits

Film

Key

Denotes films that have not yet been released

Year	Title	Role	Director	Notes
2014	Men, Women & Children	Danny Vance	Jason Reitman
	Interstellar	Young Tom Cooper	Christopher Nolan
	Worst Friends	Young Sam	Ralph Arend
2015	One & Two	Zac	Andrew Droz Palermo
	The Adderall Diaries	Teenage Stephen Elliott	Pamela Romanowsky
	Love the Coopers	Charlie Cooper	Jessie Nelson
2016	Miss Stevens	Billy Mitman	Julia Hart
2017	Call Me by Your Name	Elio Perlman	Luca Guadagnino
	Hot Summer Nights	Daniel Middleton	Elijah Bynum
	Lady Bird	Kyle Scheible	Greta Gerwig
	Hostiles	Pvt. Philippe DeJardin	Scott Cooper
2018	Beautiful Boy	Nic Sheff	Felix van Groeningen
2019	A Rainy Day in New York	Gatsby Welles	Woody Allen
	The King	King Henry V	David Michôd
	Little Women	Theodore "Laurie" Laurence	Greta Gerwig
2021	The French Dispatch	Zeffirelli B.	Wes Anderson
	Dune	Paul Atreides	Denis Villeneuve
	A Man Named Scott	Himself	Robert Alexander	Documentary
	Don't Look Up	Quentin	Adam McKay	Post-production
2022	Bones & All	Lee	Luca Guadagnino	Post-production; also producer
2023	Wonka	Willy Wonka	Paul King	Filming

Television

Theatre

Commercial

Awards and nominations

Chalamet was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Call Me by Your Name. He was also nominated for a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Critics' Choice Movie Award, all for Best Actor. During the same awards season, Chalamet gained recognition for his supporting role in Lady Bird, receiving nominations for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Acting Ensemble and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture along with the rest of the cast. For his work in Beautiful Boy, he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Critics' Choice Award, all for Best Supporting Actor.