Timothée Chalamet:
American actor Timothee Chalamet was born in New York City on December 27, 1995. He is renowned for both his artistic sense of humor in ensemble comedies and his delicate depictions of complicated characters in both indie and big-budget movies.
Timothee Chalamet was raised in a Manhattan apartment with his mother, an actress and former Broadway dancer; his father, a Frenchman who worked for UNICEF in publications; and his older sister, Pauline, an actress and ballet dancer who became well-known after being cast in HBO’s The Sex Lives of College Girls in 2021. Timothee Chalamet’s grandmother was a Broadway dancer, and they shared a building. He spent his summer vacations outside of Lyon, France, and spoke French fluently growing up.
Timothee Chalamet started performing at a young age and made appearances in stage plays and advertisements. He went to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City, just like his mother and sister.
He secured minor television parts during this period, and The Talls (2011) marked his off-Broadway debut. He made regular appearances on the television shows Homeland and Royal Pains in 2012. Chalamet played the younger version of a character played by Casey Affleck in Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar after graduating from high school in 2013.
Later, he enrolled in college, first at New York University and then Columbia University in New York City, but he eventually left to devote all of his time to acting. He later made appearances in a number of feature films, such as Miss Stevens (2016) and The Adderall Diaries (2015).
Call Me by Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino and based on André Aciman’s 2007 book about first love, was Chalamet’s breakthrough in 2017. He portrayed Elio, a multicultural adolescent in Italy in the 1980s who develops feelings for Oliver (played by Armie Hammer), the summer intern of his father, an archaeologist. His performance was widely praised by critics, and his fan base grew significantly as a result. Additionally, he became the youngest actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in eight decades.
A number of movies, including Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Hostiles, and Hot Summer Nights (all released in 2017), followed this trend. Later, he costarred with Steve Carell in the drama Beautiful Boy (2018), which was based on two memoirs about a drug-addicted father and son.
Woody Allen’s next movie, A Rainy Day in New York, was supposed to be released in 2018, but it was postponed when claims of sexual abuse against Allen arose during the Me Too movement. Timothee Chalamet declared that same year that he would contribute his earnings from the movie to Rainn (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the LGBT Center in New York, and the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund.
In the end, the movie was released in Europe in 2019 and the US the next year. Timothee Chalamet reteamed with Gerwig to play Laurie in her adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (2019) and featured in Netflix’s The King (2019), which was based on William Shakespeare’s Henriad cycle.
Timothee Chalamet had appearances in Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up and Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch in 2021. In Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, which was based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 science-fiction classic, he costarred with Zendaya that year as Paul Atreides. He repeated the role in Dune: Part Two (2024) after receiving largely positive reviews for his performance as the main character in a high-profile movie. He once more worked with Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me by Your Name, on the horror-romance movie Bones and All in 2022.
Timothee Chalamet subsequently started picking parts that highlighted his musical prowess. He portrayed a young Willy Wonka in the 2023 musical Wonka, which was based on Roald Dahl’s characters. He played singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in the movie A Complete Unknown the following year, which chronicles Dylan’s ascent to fame in folk music and culminates in his contentious, electrifying performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
After being chosen for the part in 2020, Chalamet spent years honing his portrayal of the renowned musician during the COVID-19 pandemic’s production delays. His choice to play guitar and sing live on camera instead of using overdubbing was praised by both critics and viewers. He was nominated for Best Actor at both the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes for his work.
Chalamet has received a lot of accolades for his red carpet style in addition to his playing. By embracing gender-fluid attire and emotional vulnerability, he is frequently credited with redefining modern masculinity. Designers like Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, and Haider Ackermann have been among his favorites.
Among his most daring ensembles are a short, sparkling jacket from Louis Vuitton’s women’s line worn at the 2022 Academy Awards—with nothing underneath—and a sequined harness by Virgil Abloh worn at the 2019 Golden Globe Awards. He was an obvious candidate to co-host the 2021 Met Gala, the yearly benefit for the Costume Institute at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, because of his unexpected and daring dress choices.