The outgoing year brought Timothée Chalamet to the fore. And the wave of admiration, on which the handsome prince floated, continues to grow. Everyone wants Timothy now – directors, producers, men, women, fashion houses and editors of glossy magazines.
Chalamet is half French (the emphasis in his surname falls on the last syllable), and this explains a lot. He looks and acts like a visiting European star in Hollywood – to some extent, he is. His home is New York, not Los Angeles, and a little bit more – Chambon-sur-Lignon, a village two hours from Lyon, where his beloved French grandmother lives. “Even if everything stops in Hollywood, I have a fallback – Europe.”
“Timmy looks like he just jumped out of an Eric Rohmer movie,” says Wes Anderson, who recently directed Chalamet in The French Herald. This is no doubt a compliment: Rohmer, one of the main directors of the French new wave, specialized in sentimental melodramas imbued with hidden erotica. It’s the same with Timothy: sensuality and, as it were, belonging to another, bygone era is the trademark of all his characters.
Romer (along with Jacques Rivette and Bernardo Bertolucci) was also mentioned by Luca Guadagnino when he began work on the film Call Me By Your Name. This tender drama about the first love that happened between an inexperienced young man from a good family and a 25-year-old assistant to his father, a professor, is a film adaptation of an American novel, but imbued with the spirit of old Europe, and it is not for nothing that the action takes place in the summer of 1983 in Italy. The role of the American graduate student Oliver was almost immediately given to Armie Hammer, but the 17-year-old actor, ready to do a variety of things – for example, kissing a grown man and masturbating in a peach, had to be looked for. Shia LaBeouf really liked this role, but he was already old for the role of a teenager. But Chalamet was just right, and he was not at all embarrassed by the presence of explicit scenes. What’s more, his “chemistry” with Hammer was so strong that many suspected that there really was a connection between the actors. But actually no: both Armie and Timothy were and still are heterosexual.
Every generation needs its own film about the awakening of sensuality: “Call Me by Your Name” has become for modern twenty-year-olds what for their parents – Bertolucci’s late films, “Escaping Beauty” and “Dreamers”. And just as “Escaping Beauty” gave the world Liv Tyler, so “Call Me By Your Name” introduced us to Timothée Chalamet. For the role of Elio, he was nominated for all the important film industry awards, including the Actors Guild Award, the British Academy (BAFTA), the Golden Globe and several dozen others. The culmination of the prize race was the Oscar nomination, and although Timothy lost, it was not too offensive: Gary Oldman, with the role of Churchill, took the statuette on the basis of merit, and everyone understood this very well.
As far as the profession is concerned, Timothy is old-fashioned: of course he has an agent, he signs a contract. But at the same time, every shooting for him is not just shooting, but a new stage in life, a new “family”. He is looking for like-minded people and, if he finds, stays with them for a long time. For example, Guadagnino – after “The Name” Timothy agrees to play in all the films of this Italian, and it is no longer clear who is doing a favor to whom. Or Greta Gerwig – with her, he starred first in Lady Bird, and then in Little Women.
“He appeared in our company for the first time, but it was as if he had always been there – as a member of the family, as the youngest of us,” Wes Anderson said about the shooting of The French Messenger. – I look, and he is already chatting with Bill Murray and Frances McDormand during the break. Well, it would seem, what should Timothy talk about with Francis, what common topics can they have? I came closer – and what do I hear? She tells Chalamet about what it’s like to be married for so many years, and even to a director, and how difficult it is to grow old, and all that. And he doesn’t just listen, but discusses all these things with her as if he were not twenty-five, but at least forty.
Everyone who has worked with Chalamet says that he has an “old soul”, although this sounds terrible when translated into Russian (but you know what they mean?). Chalamet is that rare case of a twenty-five-year-old actor who is more comfortable hanging out in the company of people much older than him. He knows it himself. “Grandma always swears that I don’t communicate much with my peers.” Among his fans, there are almost more people over thirty or forty than young enthusiastic high school girls. James Ivory, the 93-year-old screenwriter of Call Me by Your Name, showed up to the Oscars wearing a shirt with his portrait embroidered on it. Actress Zoe Lister-Jones also has her own fan T-shirt with the name Chalamet.
Surprisingly, this “old soul” is enclosed in the body of a beautiful child who does not seem to grow up, but if he does, then very slowly. Denis Villeneuve, the director of Dune, complained that it took a lot of effort to make Timmy look at least his age on screen – in some angles he can easily be mistaken for a fourteen-year-old. Perhaps his slender (or maybe elven?) physique is to blame, perhaps his out-of-date, thin features. Among Timothy’s nearly one million fan sites, there is also an Instagram page where his head is “added” to sculptures by Michelangelo and portraits by Caravaggio (@chalametinart) – it turns out very realistically. So Chalamet travels through world cultures, and it turns out that he suits them all perfectly.
“In this boy, I see both intelligence, and ambition, and sensitivity, and naivety, and unconditional talent,” Luca Guadagnino said about Chalam after the first meeting. We would also add from ourselves – he has caution and the ability to calculate moves in advance.
We know about Chalamet’s personal life exactly what he has and that he does not choose the last girls – at different times his lovers were Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes Leon, and the daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, Lily Rose, with whom he starred in the film The King. But he does not use his novels for personal PR, he does not publish fresh dating stories – therefore, there is no sensation in these relations.
“One of those guys I truly admire told me once: no hard drugs, Timmy, no superhero movies.” Chalamet intends to follow the advice, although it’s not the most direct or easiest route to the stars, with superhero movies for sure. By the way, he was called for the role of Spider-Man, Timothy even made a couple of tests – to finally understand how much it was not for him. “But what about Dune?” – you ask. But in “Dune” Chalamet does not play a person with superpowers, but a messiah, a hero outside of time, equally understandable in any national mythology, in any religion. The only thread that can unite his Paul Atreides with the conditional Peter Parker is the life credo, “great power – great responsibility” (well, nine-figure film adaptation budgets).
He can afford a lot of things already, but he doesn’t have a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, not even his own car. A couple of years ago, Timothy lived in his parents’ apartment and borrowed an old Honda from his father if he needed to get to the other end of the city. Now he has bought a penthouse in Manhattan, but you will never see him in AD Magazine: as in the case of his personal life, Timothy does not advertise himself in any way.
And here’s another thing: he doesn’t have his own stylist. All the things that Chalamet puts on, he chooses for himself – consciously risking, but almost always winning. Fashion for him is more than just a hobby – and, as in the case of cinema, he is looking for his “family” among fashion designers. This “family” already includes Raf Simons, Hedi Slimane and Haider Ackermann. It is said that after Chalamet wore a silk Ackermann suit to the opening of the Venice Festival, with a top and a pearl gray double belt, the number of searches in Google searches for this particular designer increased by 800%. Fashion critics have called the phenomenon the “Chalame effect”, and this is certainly a long-term effect: looking at Timothy, men are gradually getting used to the idea that giving up the traditional two-piece suit is not painful, scary or dangerous for their masculinity.
Velvet, velvet, fuchsia, scattering of flowers a la Fragonard, high heels – Chalamet tries everything. His rhinestone Louis Vuitton hoodie, which he wore to the London premiere of The King, was discussed more than the film itself. We suspect that under the impression of Timothy, who wore bright pink a couple of times, Daniel Craig chose a pink plush suit for the premiere of the latest Bond film.
In the fall of 2021, Timothy became one of the hosts at the opening of the traditional Met Gala Costume Institute ball – the actor was in a new version of a white tuxedo, again from Haider Ackermann, and white Rick Owens loose pants, which were pinned with two vintage Cartier New York 1928 brooches. a monochrome painting of the $80 classic white Converse, Chalamet says it was not so much an attempt to further support this year’s American theme of the ball as a tribute to basketball player Chuck Taylor, who promoted this model in the 1920s. Usually Met Gala attendees wear only one designer, but if you are Timothee Chalamet and you are entrusted with the role of presenter, then you can deviate from the rules and break the tradition a little. Moreover, everyone was completely delighted – however, as usual. He modestly turned the arrows from himself to designers, who, in his opinion, are “real rock stars of their time.” And he himself is “just an actor who puts on their clothes.”
But, of course, not “simple”. Timothée Chalamet is the type of new hero for a new society that is changing before our eyes. He started his adult career playing a queer role, he has an androgynous appearance without a hint of aggressive masculinity, but he is also heterosexual. Timothy became a star at the moment of transition to a new world where gender identity and sexual orientation almost ceased to play a significant role. But the very “old soul” that is inherited has become appreciated – including by French grandmothers who live two hours from Lyon. This “old soul” does not let you break away from reality, allows you to distinguish the temporary from the permanent, and saves the world – along with beauty.
Photo: press service
