Timothée Chalamet’s earliest directors on all the signs he’d be a star.
There’s Something About Timothée
Six years ago, he became the most in-demand young actor in Hollywood. What makes him so irresistible?
Photo: Courtesy: Julia Hart There’s Something About Timothée
Six years ago, he became the most in-demand young actor in Hollywood. What makes him so irresistible?
He bounded into the room wearing a backpack and a baseball cap. He shook people’s hands. He told them how much this opportunity meant to him, a gangly teenager with a viral rap about statistics under his belt and his sights set on the big leagues: Broadway, Hollywood. Everyone was smitten with Timmy. Timo. Here came a guy who could communicate like an adult, then slip seamlessly into the unpolished charm of the kid he was. Today, Timothée Chalamet is the figurehead for a cohort of sensitive actors who competed for supporting parts in the 2010s and now have top billing. If he was auditioning, there’s a good chance Lucas Hedges and Tom Holland were, too. But Chalamet became the generational icon, the golden god of couture, the cinephile charting a career that evokes James Dean’s. Here, directors and casting agents who collaborated with Chalamet before his star-making role in 2017’s Call Me by Your Name look back at his early promise.
Judy Henderson
Casting director, Homeland (2012)
The role: The spoiled but fetching son of the U.S. vice-president who romances the daughter of a war hero.
Finn Walden had to feel like he was educated but not a goody two-shoes — and that he had empathy for people. He was likable but with an edge. I called Timothée in because I had met him at La Guardia High School. He did an excellent audition. He read three scenes, all of which were with Dana, the character’s girlfriend. There were no chemistry readings needed with Morgan Saylor. He was smart, good-looking, able to take direction, and the right age. He was everyone’s first choice.
But he had a little habit we had to call his attention to because it took away from what he was doing: He would say a word and then put his lips together. We had to say, “Don’t do that because it looks like you’re making a visual comment.” He was not aware of it. I saw him at La Guardia after he left Homeland, and we hugged and said hello. He was dating Madonna’s daughter at the time. He was a kid, and so was she!
Pamela Romanowsky
Director, The Adderall Diaries (2015)
The role: In flashbacks, a self-mythologizing author abuses drugs and contends with a troubled adolescence.
His agent, Danie Streisand, was extremely confident about Timothée and showed me some tape of him. I was like, “Absolutely.” It was an offer — it wasn’t an audition. We met in New York at a restaurant for lunch. For such a young man, he was very articulate and came with his own ideas about the character. We used a lot of practical locations, and one of the things Timothée wanted to do is go see the location in advance and become familiar with it. It’s his character’s childhood house, and he spent a lot of time on that set preparing for the scenes that were going to happen there.
Jessie Nelson
Director, Love the Coopers (2015)
The role: A moody teen who explores his first romance while surrounded by his dysfunctional family at Christmastime.
Since so much of the part was about this passionate, delicious, disastrous first kiss with Molly Gordon’s character, I needed someone who could be really free and playful. When Timmy came in for his audition, his interpretation of the character was unapologetically adolescent. Those kissing scenes were some of the oddest things I’ve ever directed because you’re asking people to kiss really poorly. Sometimes it would be like, “That’s fantastic. Maybe a little less saliva, Timmy,” because he would throw himself into it. He didn’t give a fuck if his choice was a disaster.
On that movie, we had a lot of very established actors. We had Diane Keaton! And they all recognized how special Timmy was. I remember Olivia Wilde being blown away. Their jaws would just drop at how free he was. And when we would all go out for dinner, they were so protective of him. Timothée and June Squibb had a real connection. I wish I could show you the outtakes of the scene where the family dances to Bob Dylan’s “If Not for You.” I have so much incredible footage of Timmy getting down with June Squibb on the dance floor.
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Julia Hart
Director, Miss Stevens (2016)
The role: A restless theater kid bonds with the teacher chaperoning his classmates’ acting competition.
I talked to all the actors of that generation. I had a Skype with Tom Holland. They were all a part or two away from becoming stars. Timothée really went out of his way to let me know how important this role was to him. Then he and Lily Rabe read together, and she immediately called me afterwards and was like, “We are either making this movie with him or we are not making this movie.”
Jordan Horowitz, who is my husband and producer, was on a phone call with Timothée when he was considering Call Me by Your Name, just to ask Jordan’s professional advice. I think Jordan said to him on that call, “This could change your life,” and it obviously did. I remember he came over to our house after the Sundance premiere of Call Me by Your Name. It was the year after Jordan had produced La La Land and gone through that whole experience. We opened a bottle of champagne, and Jordan was just like, “Are you ready for this?”
Andrew Droz Palermo
Director, One & Two (2015)
The role: A rural Christian with teleportation powers who battles his controlling father.
Even as a 16- or 17-year-old, he had a great sense of style. He wore things in an interesting way, like tucking sweatpants or joggers into his socks. He has that casual-cool vibe. He’s also a bit of a prankster. We were at the Getty Museum together, looking at some classical paintings and catching up, and he walked all the way over to a painting and nearly put his nose on it. I think he genuinely wanted to look at the painting, but I remember this total disregard for the boundaries you’re supposed to give these things. The guard immediately came over, like, “Sir, excuse me!” He totally acted aloof, like, What’s the big deal? and walked away. He’s self-confident, and he liked to push people’s buttons a little bit.
Jason Noto and Rory Kindersley
Co-directors, Sweet Tooth (2008)
The role: An elfin boy encounters fairy-tale horrors when he’s lured into a cottage full of sugary pastries.
RK: We did an open casting call in New York and saw quite a lot of children. Probably 30 children. This sounds really cliché, but it’s the truth: When Timothée came in, we did that thing of, That’s the guy right there.
JN: He was basically an adult. He was walking in talking to us like a grown-ass person. He came in and shook our hands. He knew how to do the lines. We didn’t have to talk him through too much.
RK: His mom was there acting as his manager, essentially. He was this cheeky, mischievous little imp. He was very playful.
JN: He was completely comfortable with himself, which is bizarre at that age.
RK: He was really curious about the whole process of what we were doing. He got really involved in the makeup effects and how they were done. He was so excited that he was going to die. He was like, “This is going to look so cool!” His head gets knocked off and his body slinks to the ground, so he was super excited about that.
JN: Later, I had a feature script we were going back and forth on. I met with him about playing the lead. It was quite a racy project, kind of in a Larry Clark world. I remember his mom had to read it, and he was like, “There’s this other project, Call Me by Your Name, with this Italian director.” His mom was like, “Yeah, they’re going with that one.”
John Patrick Shanley
Director, Off Broadway’s Prodigal Son (2016)
The role: A volatile student from the Bronx who finds his poetic purpose at a New Hampshire prep school in the 1960s.
Because the kid character was so young, we were able to audition all the incredibly talented but as yet unknown people who are going to be the next wave of American acting talent, and chief among them, it turned out, was Timothée Chalamet. He had this X factor. He’s like a character that escaped from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and is visiting us here for a while.
In rehearsals, he was so far over-the-top — but it was a good over-the-top. There was a little drunk scene, and he was doing amazing physical things with it. I took him aside and said, “Ya know, he’s just drunk.” He was grateful for that because he was like, “I thought I had to make everything interesting.” I said, “No, it’s actually important that some things aren’t interesting.”
Paul Simon did some music for me, so Paul came to a dress rehearsal. Paul is maybe the most understated guy ever. He was sitting next to me, and he leaned over halfway through the first scene and said, “Kid’s good.” Then he watched a little more and said, “Kid’s very good.” That, to Paul, is like gigantic shouting.
He showed up at my apartment a couple of years ago after he was huge. He was overstimulated. He wanted to go someplace safe where he could spill on what was going on because so much was going on for him. I feared for him with that level of celebrity. But we stayed in touch, and he asked me to come to Saturday Night Live with his mother when he was on. He’s trying to survive and flourish in a world that chews people up and spits the out.
Chris McGarry
Co-star, Off Broadway’s Prodigal Son (2016)
I remember first looking at him and thinking, What amazing hair. But after the first readthrough, I was like, Who gives a shit about his hair? He had almost a preternatural maturity. Robert Sean Leonard and I were sitting around eating Entenmann’s donuts and bitching about our commutes to Jersey, and Timmy was eating vegan and discussing Ta-Nehisi Coates, which he was reading at the time.
There was one night when there was someone in the audience coming to see the show and he was nervous. I think it was someone from his personal life, perhaps a woman-friend. I’m off in my corner trying to focus and I hear him screaming and crying. I’m like, What the hell? I go around the corner and there’s this back-room loft. He’s up there by himself, and he’s doing something to prepare himself. I recognized that he was doing his Death of a Salesman monologue from Miss Stevens, full-out. I asked him after the show, “Timmy, what was going on?” He said he was just doing his monologue to get into it.
I remember him talking about Call Me by Your Name. He said he was nervous about it. He said, “I’m gonna have sex with a peach.” None of us could wrap our heads around what the context of that was until we saw the movie.
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