Timothée Chalamet, chosen for glory | Oscar Awards | Cinema | EUROtoday

“Although we are in a subjective business, the truth is that I seek greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.” With the Screen Actors Guild award in hand for taking part in Bob Dylan in A whole stranger, In February 2025, Timothée Chalamet (New York, 30 years previous) confessed to his fellow performers. The actor has by no means hidden his creative ambition, his choice of tasks has been refined along with his expertise, and now he’s making ready to win his first Oscar award for his hustler Marty Mauser in Marty Supreme. Praised by his colleagues comparable to Javier Bardem, praised by its director, Josh Safdie, after seven years collectively to make the movie, the Chalamet period in world cinema has arrived.

Only one different actor had achieved three Oscar nominations on the age of 30. And not simply anybody: Marlon Brando. Chalamet, who reached that age on December 27, now has 4, so Call Me By Your Name (2017), A whole stranger (2024) and two, as protagonist and as producer, for Marty Supreme, which opens in Spain subsequent Friday the thirtieth.

In his filmography he already accumulates titles with substance: Interstellar, Lady Bird, Mujercitas, Beautiful Boy, Call Me By Your Name (which underlined his rise in auteur cinema), Rainy Day in New York, Hostiles, To the Bone, The King (each actor needs a shakespeare), little girls, the three installments of Dune, The French Chronicle (similar: each actor needs one with Wes Anderson), Wonka, do not search for o An unknown world.

“I don’t remember wanting to dedicate myself to anything else,” he mentioned on the San Sebastián pageant within the promo for Beautiful Boy. As a baby he labored in a number of commercials, and by the tip of his adolescence he was already on the stage of the off Broadway, whereas he resolved his doubts about whether or not to really feel French (like his father, a Unicef ​​official) or American (like his mom, an actual property agent). “In the end I have been left with both worlds,” he confessed.

Added to his creative ambition is his eye for advertising. The marketing campaign of Marty Supreme It has been a hat-trick. His character—who’s partly based mostly on the true Marty Reisman—is a brawling ping-pong champion within the mid-Nineteen Fifties, a really younger compulsive conman who lies, cajoles, and concocts all types of methods to outlive. And to promote himself: he was the one who proposed that the ping-pong balls be orange in order that they might look higher, and within the movie he even prints his identify on them. That’s why Chalamet and his companion, Kylie Jenner, have appeared in vibrant orange on the pink carpets. He even led a faux Zoom assembly with the promotional staff of Marty Supreme, through which he mentioned: “If we use a basic orange, we would be copying Barbie. And how do we manage to separate? In an intense, corroded, rusty orange!” What seemed like the leak of a high-voltage call is, in reality, another promotional tool. Like the orange zeppelin flying over Los Angeles. Or Chalamet being raised to the top of The Sphere circular stadium in Las Vegas, colored orange thanks to the LED lights while shouting “Marty Supreme.” Or appearing on television surrounded by men in black with ping-pong ball heads.

Fashion also enters this promotion, in what is known as method dressing or method styling. In the Oscar race with A complete strangerthe actor dedicated himself to replicating looks by Bob Dylan. Now give away jackets Marty Supreme whom he considers great, and in each appearance his wardrobe advertises the film. It always comes out well in the marketing. An example: at that San Sebastián festival in 2018, the press was prohibited from asking about his relationship with Woody Allen, who had fallen into disgrace at the time (Amazon did not know whether or not to release Rainy day in New York). When this journalist asked the actor in his last question: “Before, at most you would worry about your behavior. Now do you study the behavior of those who work with you? Being a star, do you measure your steps much more?”, his publicist, sitting on the floor, jumped up shouting “Noooooooo. That’s a question about Woody Allen!” Chalamet looked at her with a sharp eye, and therefore decided to accompany the journalist on his way out of the suite to continue talking about the difficulties of adapting Dune and the different readings of the book: it calmed spirits.

All of the above does not mean that it is not a persistent work of interpretation. Since signing in 2018 for Marty Supreme, He has traveled the world with a ping-pong table. At the 2021 Cannes festival, he stayed in a luxury Airbnb on the outskirts of the city, rejecting a hotel suite, to have a garden with space and train with his colleagues. For a few years, he added guitar lessons to that training to perform like Bob Dylan. By video call, director Josh Safdie insists on that effort: “I met Timothée in 2017 and the person who introduced him to me assured me that he was going to be the next superstar. I wasn’t the only one, and of course those around Timothée fed that premonition. I don’t know, it seemed strange to me. Four months later I saw Call Me By Your Name, and I understood it. Timothée has the ability to take a small film and elevate it and make it bigger. “He is an icon, one of those larger than life.”

Safdie assures that one of the simplest ways to know Chalamet is to see him in motion in actual life: “There is something magical about him. In the conversations after the screenings he talks to each viewer as if there were only the two of them in the room.” The filmmaker has managed to make the actor’s ambition the spine of the adrenaline-pumping motion of Marty Mauser, his equally bold character, in two and a half hours of movie that emanate a perennial Scorsese-style state of hysteria, a beacon in Safdie’s cinema. “We rewrote the script, because we felt that that energy would work. Marty is a child of his time, of an America that believes that anything is possible; that if you have a dream, you should go for it because you will achieve it. And Timothée has that drive.”

Safdie assures that that’s the place the similarities finish. “I don’t think Timothée is a figure of individualism, as Marty was. That America in the 1950s, driven by the ironclad illusion of individualism, had an echo in Reagan’s America in the 1980s, which looked back with a condescending nostalgia. That’s why the music in the film belongs to that decade. However, Timothée was born in the 21st century, he explores more worlds and interests.”

And in fact, the filmmaker emphasizes his creative dedication. “I think it’s clear that this movie is not about sports.” Marty performs ping-pong like in The hustler Eddie Felson was into billiards. The universe through which they function issues, the opportunity of profitable cash and glory in it, not the sporting competitors. “However, Timothée has been playing table tennis for years and years. He did not despair during the pandemic, nor while I was looking for financing,” he remembers.

A really clever actor

In actuality, Timothée Chalamet has been, like his nice rival on the Oscars, Leonardo DiCaprio, selecting every venture with plenty of time and care. Search by authors, not by proposals. He went as much as Dune as a result of the individual accountable was Denis Villeneuve. Javier Bardem, his co-star within the three installments of Dune, remembers for EL PAÍS: “I met Timothée the year before the pandemic. And I already told him what I still think. If at 20 years ago Call Me By Your Name y Beautiful Boy, What will he do when he grows up?”

Bardem explains: “I’ve witnessed that progress, how he adapts to circumstances. He could be very clever, with an ideal humorousness and a great companion. He has an unlimited starvation to study, he’s all the time absorbing artistically and technically. Oh, and he respects his elders.” [risas]”The Spanish actor remembers the astonishment he felt in A whole stranger not solely the characterization, however that he sang all 15 songs similar to Dylan. “He is someone who prepares a lot. In Marty Supreme He does the best job of the year. And I think it will continue to grow.”

Chalamet fulfills one last rule to win the Oscar with Marty Supreme: abandon your beauty and become ugly. In this film, he wears acne-like dressings on his face. Gwyneth Paltrow, who met him on the set and who plays a mature actress in need of joy, saw him and recommended some creams. Chalamet showed her that her pimples were pure makeup.

And what does the aforementioned think? On the BBC, in December, he assured that his responsibility lies “in making what he does on screen believable” be it playing and singing, or playing ping-pong. “I get to get pleasure from this unbelievable life engaged on tasks that I actually care about. Many actors do not even get to work, not to mention do it on tasks that they’re actually captivated with. Truly, there are worse issues in life than having to study to play the guitar and play desk tennis at a excessive stage.” And your future? Beyond other collaborations with the Liverpool rapper EsDeeKid (the viral rumor mill claims that they are the same person), Chalamet is committed to vital development: “I wish to develop as an individual. But that may be a huge studying curve. And I attempt to not be too exhausting on myself or on these round me, who’re additionally rising.” On March 15, if the wave of One battle after one other Don’t assist DiCaprio, Chalamet will acquire his first, and well-deserved, Oscar.