Timothée Chalamet Is Still Learning How To Be A Leading Man

Timothée Chalamet says he's bracing himself for the moment this all helps prevent being fun — the press, the promotion, the cameras, the constant peach talk — however it's hard to believe him once he says it so endearingly. Soon considering that, Chalamet's youthful exuberance has become his trademark in recent months. That, and the hair. And the rapping. To imagine him as just another self-serious actor seems unnatural.


Though it's not like the ambitious young actor hasn't earned the correct to take himself somewhat seriously. His mesmerizing efficiency as a precocious 17-year-old in the throes of first love in Luca Guadagnino's sumptuous queer drama, Call Me By Your Name, scored him rave reviews, a passionate internet following, and his first Oscar nomination. Case in point, at 22, he's the youngest actor to receive a Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 80 years. Then, that same year, he showed up in Greta Gerwig's confident solo directing debut, Lady Bird, as an arrogant teen heartbreaker with long hair and an affinity for Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. With that, a star was place on Earth.


Although Chalamet isn't just any star, the likes of which can be fleeting. Watching him agonize by means of the motions of love and self-discovery in Call Me By Your Name is like watching a young actor come into his own, each vulnerability laid bare for the audience to witness. By the end, their emotions are spent, yet the excitement of witnessing the birth of something greater lingers long right after Elio's tears have dried.


Chalamet as Elio in Call Me By Your Name


"I'm segment of the anxious, cynical generation," Chalamet told MTV News while in a press day for the film. "I have my fair-share of cynicism, that's hard to leave me, however I'm having so much fun talking about this movie. I keep waiting to be not feeling this, nevertheless I'm loving every second of it."


you could blame the organic cynicism on his New York upbringing. Place on Earth and raised in Hell's Kitchen, Chalamet seemed destined for a life in the arts thanks to his Jewish mother's passion for dance and his French father's insistence on piano lessons from a young age. (One of his father's biggest regrets, Chalamet mentioned, was refusing piano lessons as a boy. "That's why I had piano lessons from eight to 12 although I hated it.") Though, those skills later came in handy while filming Call Me By Your Name in northern Italy, as would his fluent French, perfected by summers spent with his family member outdoors Lyon.


"The French piece of my upbringing was routinely very much the anti-outgoing, 'the adults are having le café in the living room so go play outdoors sort of thing, so to be able to see it pay its dividends in a performative area is really confusing nevertheless gratifying to me," he mentioned.


Learning the craft


Despite some early commercial work — and also an appearance as a corpse in each New York actor's rite of passage, Law & Order — Chalamet wasn't all that enthusiastic about acting up until he got to LaGuardia High School. It was there, inside the hallowed halls of the city's well known performing arts school, that Chalamet learned the craft, while trying out for school productions of Cabaret and Sweet Charity alongside classmate Ansel Elgort. It was here also, that rapping Lil Timmy Tim made his debut in the annual Rising Stars talent show.


"When I got to LaGuardia, I saw how seriously it can would be taken, not for the sake of self-seriousness however rather out of respect and the lineage of who's been doing this," he mentioned. Well known LaGuardia alums include Robert De Niro, Sarah Paulson, Jennifer Aniston, and Nicki Minaj.) "Then there's this idea that, 'The harder I work at this thing, the better I get at it.' That was really satisfying on the set of Call Me By Your Name because we all worked so hard. To be able to see people react to it viscerally, these are really crucial totems for young artists because it's so encouraging, and yes it makes you feel like these things aren't random."


"I wouldn't be acting without that school," he added. "I really believe that."


In his senior year, Chalamet landed a well known role in Homeland's second season as Finn Walden, the vice president's annoying adolescent son who dated Sgt. Nick Brody's daughter, Dana. The choice to join the Emmy-winning Showtime series was a no-brainer for the young actor, even if it meant missing half of his senior year. "There's a bit of trepidation any time Whenever I picture it right now because it wasn't necessarily favorable to the conclusion of my education," he mentioned. Still, he graduated LaGuardia on time in 2013.


Learning to lead


Chalamet spent that summer filming Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic Interstellar, in which he starred as Matthew McConaughey's son, before enrolling at Columbia University in the fall. Nevertheless Chalamet rapidly realized that balancing academics with a burgeoning acting career was easier mentioned than done, and soon after a fast stint at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, he quit school to pursue acting full-time. Immediately after number of indies as well as a dazzling performance in the off-Broadway production of Prodigal Son — his turn in the titular role caught a persons vision of both Guadagnino and Gerwig — Chalamet spent an idyllic spring in northern Italy. There, he learned Italian and took guitar and piano lessons, categorize in attempt to create for the role of Elio Perlman in Call Me By Your Name, based on André Aciman's intimate coming-of-age novel of the same name.


"The book was such a window into a young person's experience in a way that those reads rarely are," Chalamet mentioned, adding how it reminded him of one of his preference books, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. "Anytime that you could play a non-surface young person, you must leap at that possibility


Chalamet as Kyle in Lady Bird


and thus he leapt at the chance to play a disaffected youth in Lady Bird. "You can tell it was someone contemporaneous who was telling the story and then because it was Greta, who made everything so specific to the degree that I might would be playing a character who has to be antagonistic to some degree and however has lines and also a characterization that's so specific that you feel like he is a real human and not just a two-bit villain," he mentioned. In describing Chalamet, Gerwig told GQ: "Imagine a young Christian Bale crossed with a young Daniel Day-Lewis, with a sprinkle of young Leonardo DiCaprio. Then raise them speaking French in Manhattan and give them a Mensa-level IQ plus a passion for hip-hop." ("I don't have a Mensa-level IQ," Chalamet smiled.)


Lady Bird also gave him the possibility to work with his friend, and "neighbor of sorts," Lucas Hedges, a fellow actor known for playing perplexing, earnest young boys. Having watched Hedges go through his own breakout year in 2016 with the release of Manchester By the Sea — in which the younger Hedges scored a Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for a role that Chalamet also auditioned for — Chalamet's crazy year has only brought them closer.


"Lucas and I have a very specific and loving friendship ... We spent about five to six years walking into casting offices with each other, giving each other dirty looks," he mentioned. "I was in the library at NYU last fall and I'd be YouTubing all of this stuff of his, all the press interviews, and I guess he was already my friend at that point yet nonetheless you sort of yearn for the possibility yourself. And right now it's not like I'm just watching my buddy do it anymore, so he's someone that I have been reaching out to and leaning on."


Yet don't call them the next generation of Hollywood stars — nevertheless. "It feels a little bit premature because Trump's the president, and who understands if any of us will be around."


Learning to take control


In talking to Chalamet, one thing becomes clear: He's still learning. Every role presents a new challenge, a new possibility for growth. Chalamet's next film, Felix Van Groeningen's Beautiful Boy, finds the actor battling drug addiction opposite Steve Carell, who plays his father in the family member drama. "The Damaged Circle Breakdown is just so heartbreaking and brilliant he mentioned of Van Groeningen's previous film, "that the idea of not working with him as soon as the possibility presents itself is crazy." Later this year he'll begin filming The King, helmed by David Michôd for Netflix, in which he'll play a young Henry V.


While his approach to director readings has changed since the release of Call Me By Your Name — "I used to have meetings with directors where I'd embarrassingly pitch myself the complete time," he mentioned — what he's looking for in assignments remains the same: "It's director first, story second, role third."


"As you get to 25 or 26 and you also age up and age out as a guy, I have three or four years left to play these younger — whichever that indicates — roles, and although I really don't feel any pressure right now to rush," he mentioned. "There's a global where maybe I don't do anything for a while."


He's also still learning to navigate the heavy feeling that sets in soon after you mention goodbye to a character. For Chalamet, letting go of Elio and his emotional turmoil, and also because the brotherly rapport he built with co-star Armie Hammer while in those three months they spent bicycling around Crema and listening to Frank Ocean off set, abandoned him feeling a little empty.


Chalamet (C) with Hammer (L) and Guadagnino (R)


"I don't like that period where it's over. You get good at being straightforward on camera on the days you do not even hope to he mentioned. "And then you must face yourself once the movie ends and put yourself back with each other as a human being. There's something especially weird, also, because I'm forming myself as a human still."


It's this level of vulnerability and depth that could with little effort make Chalamet the DiCaprio of his generation. Not that he's thinking like that. To Timmy and his companions, he's just a kid from New York who loves rap music and watching movies and has approximately zero chill at all times.


"This movie's getting a certain kind of acclaim that I feel like at a young age is rare and that leaves me with a sense of pressure in my head that I have to come off with a British accent or be very serious or thespian-like," he mentioned. "I went to LaGuardia. I'm enthusiastic about The Master the way I'm enthusiastic about The Night of the Hunter the way I'm enthusiastic about Army of Shadows the way I'm enthusiastic about Y Tu Mamá También.


although that [kid who raps] is me, the way falling out of a chair at New York Film Festival is me, also


Maybe he's not such a cynic soon considering that.