Timothée Chalamet names his favourite Timothée Chalamet movie: “That’s at the top of my list”
It’s easy to understand why some people are sick of Timothée Chalamet appearing just about everywhere, plastered over posters, social media, ad campaigns, you name it, but that’s because he’s damn good at being funny, charming, imposing, whimsical, and arrogant all at the same time.
He’s already amassed a ridiculous collection of hits, despite the fact that he looks only about 12 years old, and Lil’ Timmy is so good in fact, that he can be in one of the greatest films of the 21st century with barely anyone noticing.
You’d be forgiven for forgetting that the French-American was in Christopher Nolan’s 2014 galaxy-stradling epic, Interstellar, playing a younger version of Tom, the son of Matthew McConaughey’s character. He’s only in the first third of the film, before Tom grows up to become Casey Affleck, which is a shame, but it happens, as is the nature of time, and we don’t have as much of it to wait around like Richard Linklater did with Boyhood.
Chalamet was still just a teenager, a complete unknown (pun fully intended) at the time, such that nobody could have predicted he would go on to eclipse the star power of many of his castmates, and despite all the success and dizzying fame that have followed since, he still has a fondness for this early big hit.
“That’s at the top of my list. That’s the one I go back to and watch,” he revealed to Zane Lowe during an interview for Apple Music, highlighting, “There’s a scene where [McConaughey], the best acting, some of the best acting of the decade, where he’s weeping in the ship. I’m the other half of that scene, so I thought it would cut sort of back and forth.”
The scene to which Chalamet is referring is one of the quiet highlights of the entire film. After a horrendous experience on a planet where time runs much faster than on Earth, McConaughey’s Joseph ‘Coop’ Cooper goes through 23 years’ worth of messages from his family, and as he watches Tom’s messages, which include updates about his grandfather, wife, and the death of his young son, Coop weeps at the life he missed out on to go to space. McConaughey’s performance is so captivating in this scene, the camera is mostly on him, and Chalamet recedes to the background, eventually replaced about halfway through the scene by Affleck, never to be seen again.
As grateful as he was to share screen time with McConaughey, whom he would come to see as a mentor figure, the young thesp still found himself frustrated at Tom’s lack of screen time. “I thought it was going to do something for my career the way it didn’t,” he admitted, “I just thought my part was bigger, basically.”
Unfortunately for our hero, Tom’s character was also doomed to be sidelined, with the primary relationship in Interstellar being between Coop and his daughter, Murph, whereas his son’s storyline revolves around him feeling isolated, as he grows more and more resentful towards his absentee father.
Luckily for Chalamet, his big break was just around the corner, and within three years, everyone would be talking about how great he was in Call Me by Your Name, with a heartwrenching scene of his own that had the camera focused on his crying face this time, so it’s nice that he’s able to look back on this period happily now.
