Timothée Chalamet

**Timothée Hal Chalamet** (born December 27, 1995) is an American actor. He Is Best Known For His Roles As Elio Perlman In Call Me By Your Name And Paul Atreides In Dune And Dune: Part Two.

He Plays The Role Of Raze Darkholme In Laura And Raze.

## Early life

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, 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 Rodman Flender and Amy Lippman.

Chalamet is bilingual in English and French, and holds dual United States and French citizenship, due to his French father. 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. 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 miserable due to the lack of a creative outlet within the school's academically rigorous environment. Heath Ledger's performance in *The Dark Knight* (2008) inspired him to establish a career in acting. He applied to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. His acceptance into the school was a turning point in his appreciation for acting. 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

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. 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 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, Chalamet made his feature film debut in a minor role in Jason Reitman's *Men, Women & Children*. In the same 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 $700 million worldwide. Also in 2014, Chalamet had a supporting role in *Worst Friends*, a comedy which had a limited theatrical release and received positive reviews. In the next year, Chalamet co-starred in Andrew Droz Palermo's fantasy thriller *One & Two*, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it received 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.

In 2016, Chalamet 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. His performance was praised and won him the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play, in addition to a nomination 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* described Chalamet's act as "compelling" and "startling", with his character's speech from *Death of a Salesman* as among the best he has ever seen. Stephen Holden of *The New York Times* compared him to James Dean. 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, 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* and *The New York Times* also featured him in such lists. 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 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 2018 and generated mixed reviews from critics, though Chalamet 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. In his final film of 2017, Scott Cooper's western *Hostiles*, Chalamet played a young soldier named Philippe DeJardin, alongside Christian Bale.

In 2018, Chalamet joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Later that year, Chalamet portrayed 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*. Directed by Felix Van Groeningen, the film 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, 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*. The Me Too movement prompted a resurgence of the 1992 sexual abuse allegation against Allen. Chalamet said he was unable to answer questions about working with Allen due to his contractual obligations; the *Huffington Post* obtained a copy of Chalamet's contract which disputed this. Chalamet donated his salary to the charities Time's Up, LGBT Center of New York, and RAINN, and did not promote the film. Allen claimed in his 2020 memoir *Apropos of Nothing* that Chalamet told Allen's sister Letty Aronson that he only denounced him in an attempt to improve his chances of winning an Academy Award for *Call Me by Your Name*. Chalamet next 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 an episode of the sketch comedy series *Saturday Night Live* in 2020. 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. Brianna Zigler of *Paste Magazine* found him to be "perfectly attuned to Anderson's highly specified wavelength". 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 only choice to play the role: "I needed that for the audience to believe this young man will be able to lead a whole planet." *Dune* received positive reviews with *The Hollywood Reporter*'s David Rooney praising his "magnetic pensiveness [that] gives the coming-of-age element some heart" and Lewis Knight of *Daily Mirror* writing that "Timothée Chalamet completes his ascension to Hollywood leading man status". *Dune* earned over $400 million worldwide.

In his final role of the year, Chalamet played Yule, a skater punk, in Adam McKay's ensemble Netflix original comedy film *Don't Look Up*. It received mixed reviews from critics. Justin Chang of the *Los Angeles Times* found Chalamet "sweetly sincere" in his small part. The ensemble cast of the film received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Chalamet reunited with Guadagnino in the romantic horror film *Bones & All* (2022), in which he starred alongside Taylor Russell as cannibal drifters. The film premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival.

Chalamet will next reprise the role of Paul Atreides in the sequel to *Dune*, titled *Dune: Part Two*, and play Willy Wonka in the musical film *Wonka*, directed by Paul King. He will also lend his voice to the Netflix adult animated musical special *Entergalactic.*

## Awards

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.

## Links (Social Media)

tchalamet On Instagram

RealChalamet On Twitter