Timothee Chalamet was advised to gain weight while auditioning for movie roles earlier in his career.
“If I auditioned for The Maze Runner or Divergent, things of that variety that were popping when I was coming up, the feedback was always, ‘Oh, you don’t have the right body,’” Chalamet, 28, said on the Monday, November 11 episode of Apple Music’s “The Zane Lowe Interview Series.”
The Dune star revealed, “I had an agent that called me and said, ‘You got to put on weight,’ basically — not aggressively, but you know.”
Rather than beef up for leading man roles in big-budget action flicks, Chalamet gravitated toward smaller films that had a “very personal style” as well as higher prestige. Those included Lady Bird, Little Women and Call Me By Your Name, for which he earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination in 2018.
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“This is where I found my rhythm, my confidence, my flow, whatever you want to call it,” Chalamet explained.
He compared his path to stardom with that of music legend Bob Dylan, whom he portrays in the upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown, which hits theaters on Christmas Day.
“I found my way into these very personalized movies,” Chalamet said. “For [Dylan], it was folk music. He couldn’t keep a rock and roll band because they would all get hired by other kids that had more money, literally, in Minnesota.”
Chalamet eventually graduated to the big time, headlining the megahit Dune movies as well as Wonka, which made $634 million at the worldwide box office last year.
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A Complete Unknown represents a return to character-driven fare for Chalamet, who sings in the trailer that dropped in early October.
Later that month, the actor — proving that he doesn’t take himself that seriously — showed up to a Timothee Chalamet look-alike contest in New York City. Us Weekly was on the scene. The actor snuck into the crowd in Washington Square Park, sporting a baseball cap and a black mask. After revealing himself, he posed for pictures with some of his doppelgangers.
Of all the Timmys in competition, 21-year-old Miles Mitchell ended up the winner and took home the $50 prize and oversized trophy. Meanwhile, another attendee named Jared Dylan Borek was looking to scout out the next internet heartthrob for his modeling agency.
“It’s a scrawny white boy parade,” he told Us. “It’s perfect. It’s what we look for. We’ll see how it turns out. I’m hopeful.”
