THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE
Since becoming the youngest Best Actor Oscar nominee in over 60 years, TimothĂ©e Chalamet has established himself as one of the brightest sparks of his generation. Heâs back in the conversation once more this year with his turn in Beautiful Boy, authoring the role of a drug-addicted teenager with the kind of nuance that would elude much more experienced performers. As filmmakers line up to cast Chalamet, co-stars rush to praise him and fans fall over themselves to get a glimpse of him, Joe Utichi meets the rising star whose focus remains ever on his craft. PHOTOGRAPHS BY GABRIEL GOLDBERG
Deadline Hollywood - Oscar Preview
Though heâs turning 23 in a month, TimothĂ©e Chalamet might be fated to play teenagers on screen for years still to come. He just has one of those faces; big, doe eyes, and a mop of unmanageable hair. The eyes light up and he animates when the conversation turns to his favorite rappers (Lil B and Kid Cudi), where to find the best bagels in New York City (Tompkins Square Bagels), or what he felt when he saw Moonlight at the Angelika.
And yet there is an old soul lurking within. It was obvious to co-star Armie Hammer when the two worked together on Call Me by Your Name, in which Chalamet played the pleasures and pains of a 17-year-oldâs first love with the wisdom of one who lived it long ago, and who understands it enough to relive it on camera. âI was asking him for advice,â Hammer says of the depth he found opposite him. âI was like, âHow did you do that? What is that thing? The emotional vulnerability and the raw-ness; whatâs the secret behind that?â
Chalamet and I meet for breakfast at a West Hollywood hotel, and after his bounding arrival, and some fast-paced small talk, the tone changes when the topic turns to his chosen profession. As he speaks about his journey so far, and the responsibility he feels inherent within his career choices, Chalamet chooses his words with care and sincerity.
That care hasnât gone unnoticed by his collaborators. âWe met and it was instant rec-ognition,â remembers Luca Guadagnino, who directed Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name. âThe guy I was talking with had this brooding, unbiased determination and ambition to be a great actor, and yet he had this kind of soft. ingenue naĂŻvetĂ© of a young boy. Those two things together were incredible.â
Contradictions like this lie at the heart of TimothĂ©e Chalamet. Since Call Me by Your Name, celebrity has come to claim him. The 200-strong army of young fans that camped outside Deadlineâs The Contenders London event in October around the time of his arrival are proof of that. He doesnât appear to be all that afraid of it, still grateful for the latitude it gives him to design his next steps. His priority, though, is on the steak, not the sizzle. Where can acting take him? What can it offer? Which questions can it pose and answer?
âIâm no authority on this, and I donât want to speak cavalierly,â Chalamet says. He will offer self-deprecating qualifiers like this throughout our time together, before saying something perfectly authoritative, like, âThe types of roles I hope to do are things where Iâll hopefully have to shapeshift. Itâs important not to feel the work of someone onscreen, and instead to feel the urgency or the reality of the story being told; and that doesnât mean it has to be immediately relatable.â
He mentions his current mission: under-standing the foibles of different time periods. Earlier this year he wrapped on David Michodâs The King, playing the British monarch Henry V alongside Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn and Robert Pattinson. As we meet, heâs in Los Ange-les on a weekend break from Boston, where heâs playing Laurie in Greta Gerwigâs adaptation of Little Women. âItâs been so satiating to be able to work on something where we have to learn the manners of the period. Itâs challenging. It incorporates the madness of this all.â Both films have been, he says, a âdeep diveâ into another way of life. His chance to shapeshift.
Director Scott Cooper gave Chalamet his first real taste of period work, casting him as a French private of Christian Baleâs army in Hostiles. âI remember seeing him astride a quarter-horse for the first time, certain it was not part of the syllabus at LaGuardia Performing Arts School,â he says. âHe was as fear-stricken as his character would have been, a fish out of water wholly unprepared for the journey ahead. But we all appreciated his feverish exuberance.â Chalamet âis really intelligent and open to all of the stimuli the world offersâ.
Chalamet remembers his time at LaGuardia as the first time he felt he had an outlet, âand a way to learn about myself.â It was there that he first started to take acting seriously. His sister Pauline was already enrolled, and he went âa little naive to what it was going to be. I had an idea that it was like grid-style rows in a class-room, learning about drama.â But they put him on stage. âIt made it more of an experience. It feels like thereâs honor in how, for so long, peo-ple have been in playhouses doing these things.â
But Chalamet is also among the first stars of the post-social media generation. Where many his age seek fame through Instagram or YouTube accounts (and he has dabbled in both), Chalamet also looks to the history of his form and the greats that came before him, voraciously consuming cinema. And yet the di-chotomy of his youth means thinks deeply, too, about how technology is changing everything about cinema and the arts. Over the course of our conversation, we alight on the collapse of album sales, the streaming subscription model of movie consumption, digital versus film, and much more. He is determined to bridge the gap between all that came before him, and all that is yet to come.
He once did a reading, he remembers, with Sopranos star Edie Falco, who joked, about a play sheâd just done, that it had drawn critical praise because it was only 80 minutes long. âLike you earn a more favorable review because people can get out quicker,â he laughs. The more cynical way to look at it is that people have shorter attention spans than they used to.â But it isnât true, he insists. While he was in London he went to see The Inheritance on stage. Itâs a two-part play that runs over six hours, and itâs one of London theaterâs hottest tickets. âThe audience there was, again, a younger crowd.â The forms are being expanded by the likes of YouTube, Netflix and Amazon (which produced his new film Beautiful Boy), not replaced. âI see more liberty in whatever those other forms are.â
YouTube, also, has become a fertile resource for the researching actor. Chalamet turned to the site for footage of drug addiction that would inform his performance in Beautiful Boy. It was this, along with spending time with addicts, that offered the epiphany he sought. âOh wait, addiction doesnât have a face. This isnât a bridge I have to cross to understand playing this. This is a human illness. Donât play the stereotype of a drug addict. Play a human whoâs addicted to drugs.â
Felix Van Groeningenâs movie is based on a true story and adapts two memoirs; David Sheffâs Beautiful Boy and Nic Shellâs Tweak. It splits its time between the two of them: a sonâChalametâconfronting his own drug addiction, and his father, grappling with an inability to help. Luke Davies, who earned an Oscar nomination for 2016âs Lion, co-wrote the script with Van Groeningen, but nearly didnât. He had examined his own addiction issues in the 2006 film Candy, based on his novel, and didnât feel the need to go back there. By chance, as he was readying to refuse to the meeting, in the days after Philip Seymour Hoffmanâs death, his father emailed him, and it was his message of gratitude that his sonâs journey had reached a place of hope rather than despair that inspired the younger man to take the job.
Itâs especially relevant because Beautiful Boy, both in memoir form and onscreen, does an extraordinary job of tackling the ways ad-diction affects so many more lives than just those addicted. âItâs really an anti-glorification of drug use,â notes Chalamet. âIf films with this subject matter lean into tragedy tonally, youâre almost prepared for it. Or they lean the other way, into a kind of celebratory, upbeat, tragically cool thing. This is, hopefully, what the reality of it is. The subject matter is already tough, and we want the redemption of it to be in plain sight, but the honesty is in how fucking terrifying it is to be using, and also how terrifying it feels to be sober.â
âHis fearlessness is really his genius,â Van Groeningen says of his decision to cast Chalamet opposite Steve Carell as Nicâs father David. âThey had this great vibe together, and it was clear they were the perfect father and son.â
The work the young actor put into finding that line between stereotype and humanity cannot be underestimated. In Nicâs sober moments, the pain and struggle to stay clean is authored by Chalamet with meticulous precision. And when he uses, his performance is colored with shame and regret as much as with relief and pleasure. Nic Sheff struggled with methamphetamine addiction, but the subtlety of Chalametâs work will be recogniz-able to anyone who has dealt with addiction in any of its forms.
âWhat must it be like to have your heart in one place, your brain in another, and your actual hands doing something else?â Chalamet wonders. âItâs about the fracturing of the human spirit in that way. And how that can stillâas a testament to Nic being alive and well todayâbe redeemed and saved.â
Chalamet won the role in Beautiful Boy before Call Me by Your Name put him on the map and charged him toward becoming the youngest Best Actor Oscar nominee since Mickey Rooney in 1940. On stage at our London event, he modestly joked that he was grateful simply for getting the job. But through it, he sees the importance of its resonance. âI feel the pressure of wanting to get Beautiful Boy out there. Itâs extremely important, not only for people all across America, but also for people my age. Weâre going through this, and inherent to that is the difficulty of discussing something that is really upsetting and devastating to a lot of families. But I think thatâs the importance of art and movies.â
Responsibility, he says, is the first feeling he must always tackle. âResponsibility to the story, and what the material is all about, and to bringing that out in the most human way.â This matters to him. So too does social responsibility. When allegations of historical sexual abuse by Woody Allen resurfaced, in the wake of the reckoning of the Timeâs Up movement, Chalamet chose to pledge his salary for his role in Allenâs A Rainy Day in New Yorkâas yet unreleasedâto Timeâs Up, the LGBT Center in New York and RAINN. âThis year has changed the way I see and feel about so many things,â he said in a statement.
His focus now is on working with directors who feel a âlifelineâ with the project theyâre directing. âI know Greta feels that way about Little Women. Luca was trying to get Call Me by Your Name made for eight years. Beautiful Boy took 10 years. Denis [Villeneuve] talks about Dune like that book was one of the loves of his childhood. I think itâs important, especially in the urgent time weâre living in, not to indulge, but to try to tell stories with people that are coming from the heart.â
And, as is his nature, he credits the influences that have crossed his path for instilling that purpose in him. âI feel really grateful, first with Armie Hammer, and now with Steve Carell, to have worked with good people whose intentions were, creatively, in the right places.â
âI had an amazing dance partner,â Hammer counters. âI donât know that Iâve ever had a scene partner whoâs given so much, and given you the luxury of all of his emotional vulnerability, just right on the surface, in a totally unguarded and unprotected way.â
âLike the best actors, and those more seasoned than Timmy, he arrives well-prepared and full of ideas,â recalls Cooper. âOnce we began working, it was clear that the talent he possessed was preternatural, and that he was likely a once-in-a-generation talent, not unlike Christian. But because heâs too young to have a great deal of technique, what weâre witnessing is a wonderful combination of talent, bravura, and fearlessness that I hope he never loses.â
Chalamet will navigate this Oscar season all the wiser for his time with Call Me by Your Name and Lady Bird a year ago. But his mind is also on Little Women, which has reunited him with Lady Birdâs star and director, Saoirse Ronan and Greta Gerwig. He will take the red eye out of LA at the end of this weekend to get back to work.
âIâve talked about it with Saoirse and Greta, but Iâve never been on a set where the first week or so isnât about establishing a working relationship with everyone,â he says. âI think a lot of the rhythms weâve had are continuations from the set of Lady Bird, and the awesome time we had on that. Weirdly, thereâs another layer of how much time we spent together last year in general [on the awards circuit]. Leaving school and working on stuff with your friends has that feel, that you just all speak each otherâs language. Itâs really weird to have that on this movie. But itâs really nice to be able to tune into Gretaâs and Saoirseâs creative wavelength.â
Heâs itching to get back. âYou learn so much from each job, and not just from the role or what you have to learn, but from where you are in the world. That could be Pittsburgh in the winter, or Budapest in the summer.â On Little Women, heâs in the Massachusetts heartland where the book is set. â[Author] Louisa May Alcott is buried out there. The book takes place in that setting. Weâre immersed in the legend of the book every day.â
He had never read Little Women before the job came along. âA lot of guys arenât aware of the importance of it, and how impactful it was,â he says. But heâs put the work into getting up to speed, and can speak with confidence now. âA lot of Louisa May Alcottâs male friends claimed to be the Laurie that the book was based onâI think thereâs evidence that it was one person, and that a lot of people were wrong in the assumption that it was them.â
And yet still, within it all, the eternal contradiction of TimothĂ©e Chalamet means that he also feels it in his bones. Long before he did that reading with Falco, he remembers her showing up at LaGuardia to give his class a lecture. âSomeone was like, `Whatâs your process?â Which is the greatest softball if an actor wants to meat-up an answer,â Chalamet laughs. âShe said, `I donât know what it is, but I just do it.â That really made sense to me.â *
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