The movie that made Timothée Chalamet feel like a fraud: “I had no career”
There’s nothing inherently wrong with people who are good at their job telling other people that they’re good at their job, but Timothée Chalamet has nonetheless rubbed some folks the wrong way by setting his sights as high as possible and touting his own accomplishments.
Has he been putting out “top of the line” performances for the last seven or eight years, as he claimed? Yep, seeing as he’s notched two Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe nods during that time, as well as leading Wonka and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune duology to box office success.
On the flipside, nobody likes it when someone gets too big for their boots, with many accusing Chalamet of crossing the line into arrogance. Then again, it’s been noted that his recent aloof and ego-massaging schtick is all part of the inspired marketing campaign for Marty Supreme, so it might not be until his next role begins to take shape that everyone finds out where his head’s actually at.
Method marketing is nothing if not a new wrinkle on one of the industry’s most divisive approaches to acting, but since he’s been hoovering up the headlines wherever he goes and once again proved himself as a draw by steering Josh Safdie’s solo directorial debut to A24’s second highest-grossing opening weekend ever, the leading man continues to cement himself as arguably his generation’s marquee talent.
Chalamet has become increasingly comfortable in his own skin, but that hasn’t always been the case. In fact, he found himself stuck in the middle of an oxymoronic existential crisis a decade ago, when the movie he called the greatest thing he’d ever been a part of also left him feeling like he didn’t belong.
When asked to name the finest entry in his ever-expanding filmography, he noted that Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar was “at the top of my list”. He only had a minor role as the 15-year-old version of Matthew McConaughey’s son, Tom Cooper, but he was objective enough to call it the best thing he’d ever been in, despite being left devastated by having his role whittled down.
Initially, Chalamet had more screentime, and he admitted to Emma Stone that he “wept for an hour” after catching an early screening alongside Nolan and other key creatives and discovering that many of his scenes hadn’t made the final cut. Not only that, but the esteemed ensemble made him feel completely out of place.
In a double whammy of despair, his reduced visibility came when he was sitting with Nolan, McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, and John Lithgow. “I really had no career at this point,” he confessed. “So I was the fraud a little bit, in a room.” He was still a teenager at the time, and those names had experience and awards coming out of their ears, with his insecurities preying on him to make him feel like a mere pretender.
Based on how things have been going for him in the decade since, though, Chalamet won’t be feeling fraudulent ever again.
