Slim, sensitive, ambitious How megastar Timothée Chalamet is redefining Hollywood
From a high school rap video to an Oscar nomination: Timothée Chalamet's career is about discipline, staging - and breaking away from the expectations Hollywood places on its stars.
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- Even as a teenager, Timothée Chalamet showed a pronounced passion for the stage with his rap alter ego "Lil Timmy Tim", which still characterizes his acting career today.
- Despite initial doubts about his body image, he established himself as a Hollywood star who embodies a new male image with films such as "Call Me by Your Name", "Dune" and "Wonka".
- His relationship with Kylie Jenner broke the public image of him and underlined that Chalamet could not be confined to a single role or persona.
In one of his early appearances after his breakthrough with the film "Call Me by Your Name", Timothée Chalamet sits with Jimmy Fallon and looks as if he has accidentally fallen onto the chair. He barely looks the presenter in the eye, laughs nervously and keeps glancing at the tips of his shoes.
Anyone who thinks Chalamet is shy has never seen him rap. Before he became an actor and Hollywood star, he wanted to be a rapper. As a teenager, he said of himself that he was "the next Slim Shady" and transformed himself into "Lil Timmy Tim" - a rap alter ego of his own that had little in common with the restraint of Jimmy Fallon.
With "Lil Timmy Tim", Chalamet rehearsed a lust for performance that would shape his career. There is a video from 2012 showing him as a 17-year-old performing at a talent show at his high school. "Lil Timmy Tim, pull up your pants," Chalamet raps, only to then demonstratively not do so and perform Nicki Minaj's "Roman's Revenge" with his pants almost hanging down to his knees.
This video is said to have later convinced director Paul King to offer Chalamet the role of Willy Wonka - without ever casting him. He had seen the video and knew that Chalamet could sing and dance, King told Rolling Stone magazine: "It was a direct offer because, in my opinion, he was the only one who could do it."
Chalamet was taught to perform from an early age. His mother was a Broadway dancer, his father worked as a journalist and for Unicef. His sister is also an actress. He completed high school at a New York art school.
After graduating from there, he first began studying at Columbia, then at NYU. However, he never finished his studies. His first Hollywood successes came before him: he played a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar". This was followed by "Lady Bird", "Call Me by Your Name" and "Little Women" and his acting career was finally established.
No hard drugs and no superhero films
Chalamet attracted particular attention with "Call Me by Your Name". Interview magazine asked: "Is Timothée Chalamet the new Leonardo DiCaprio?" The Guardian spoke of "Chalamania".
Hollywood had made up its mind: Chalamet was to be the new star. With his leading role in "Marty Supreme", he can hope to win an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the third time. He has already won the Golden Globe for it.
No hard drugs and no superhero films, someone is said to have advised him at the beginning of his career. And he has stuck to this advice well so far (at least as far as superhero films are concerned, we can check). Nevertheless, Chalamet always plays serious roles. Characters with extremes: The Messiah in "Dune", an eccentric entrepreneur in "Wonka", Bob Dylan in "Like A Complete Unknown" and now an ambitious table tennis player in "Marty Supreme".
Hollywood has long had precise ideas about how such roles should be cast: with bodies and characters that take up space. This picture looks surprisingly cramped next to Chalamet. He is slim, androgynous, has fine facial features, no muscle armor, no broad shoulders. The New York Times once called him a "noodle boy".
This was quite a challenge for Chalamet at the beginning. At castings for films such as "Maze Runner" or "Divergent", he was told that he didn't have the right body. "My agent called me and said: 'You have to put on weight'," he later said in an interview. But changing his own body to fit into a blockbuster format was out of the question for him.
Chalamet refuses to be pigeonholed
Instead, he plays messiahs, eccentrics and geniuses without trying to play hard. This also makes him a projection surface. Something like an ideal image of so-called performative men who visibly stage sensitivity. Chalamet appears desirable, but not threatening; present, but not dominant.
And when he says at the SAG Awards ceremony: "I know people don't normally talk like this, but I want to be one of the greats", it is not perceived as patriarchal pathos and male hubris. Rather as authentic, almost dreamy determination.
Chalamet did not say this casually. He learned to play the harmonica and guitar for the film "Like A Complete Unknown" and table tennis for "Marty Supreme". "He often said - even when I would have been satisfied: 'I'll do it again'," recalls the Swiss Diego Schaaf, who trained Chalamet to play table tennis.
But there was something that upset the public's image of Chalamet: Chalamet's relationship with influencer and make-up entrepreneur Kylie Jenner. When pictures of the two of them at the US Open in 2023 confirmed their relationship, questions immediately arose: What does he see in her? What do they talk about?
The two have now been a couple for over three years. Looking back, it's not the relationship itself that is astonishing - but the audacity with which people had previously thought they knew who Chalamet should be by his side. And therefore also knowing who Chalamet (and Jenner) was.
It was a break that freed him from this entrenched role. Perhaps the young man on Fallon's couch was never shy, but just another side of the character who is also the self-assured "Lil Timmy Tim". Or the "Noodle Boy" who embodies a new masculinity. Chalamet cannot be pigeonholed into a single category. He is all of them.
The film "Marty Supreme" opens on February 26 at blue Cinema.
