(1995-)

Who Is Timothée Chalamet?

Timothée Chalamet (born December 27, 1995) received an Academy Award nomination as lead actor for his performance in the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name, making him the youngest actor in this category since a 19-year-old Mickey Rooney was nominated for 1939’s Babes in Arms. Chalamet has also appeared in the popular films Interstellar (2014) and Lady Bird (2017), and starred as Henry V in The King (2019). His name reflects his French heritage, and he is fluent in that language.

Timothée Chalamet attends the ’Call Me By Your Name’ photocall at De Russie Hotel on January 24, 2018 in Rome, Italy.

Movies & TV

‘Call Me By Your Name’

In Call Me By Your Name, Chalamet portrays 17-year-old Elio Perlman, who develops a crush on, enters into a sexual relationship with, and ends up truly loving Oliver (played by Armie Hammer), a 24-year-old graduate student staying with Elio’s family in Italy in the summer of 1983. Chalamet’s luminous performance as the young, vulnerable Elio was consistently applauded. In addition to his Academy Award nomination, Chalamet was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, and he received best actor awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Call Me By Your Name is based on André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name; the screenplay is by James Ivory and the film was directed by Luca Guadagnino. Chalamet was 17 when he first talked to Guadagnino about the film, and Guadagnino said that when he met Chalamet, “I really felt immediately that he had the ambition, the intelligence, the sensitivity, the naiveté, and the artistry to be Elio.” (While the movie was being developed, the director also saw Chalamet shine Off-Broadway in John Patrick Shanley’s Prodigal Son.)

Prior to filming, Chalamet spent a month and a half in Italy to prepare for the role. As Elio speaks French, Italian and English, Chalamet learned Italian; he also studied piano and guitar. When Hammer arrived three weeks before filming, Chalamet was able to guide the older actor around, and the time they spent together allowed them to forge an easy relationship that helped create onscreen chemistry. (They now have an ongoing friendship.)

As he accepted one award for his performance, Chalamet addressed director Guadagnino: “I’ll be endlessly thankful and stupefied that you put an actor with so little street cred as myself into a role as layered, and complex, and contradictory, and confused as Elio Perlman.”

‘Lady Bird’

Chalamet enjoyed a role in another Oscar-nominated 2017 film: Lady Bird. In this movie he portrays Kyle Scheible, one of the title character’s love interests. Chalamet said he tried to humanize the guitar-playing high schooler, hoping that viewers will “see that character as an antagonist that is genuinely suffering, has real emotions and is living a sad existence.”

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird‘s director, has said she considers Chalamet “a young Christian Bale crossed with a young Daniel Day-Lewis with a sprinkle of young Leonardo DiCaprio, and then raised speaking French in Manhattan and given a Mensa-level IQ and a love of hip-hop.”

‘Homeland,’ ‘Interstellar’

At the beginning of his screen career Chalamet was seen on the shows Royal Pains and Law & Order. During his senior year of high school he was in Homeland as Finn Walden, the vice president’s son (and hit-and-run driver). This led to an appearance in Interstellar (2014) as Matthew McConaughey’s son. Other early Chalamet movies include Men, Women & Children (2014), Love the Coopers (2015) and Hot Summer Nights (2017).

‘Hostiles,’ ‘Beautiful Boy,’ ‘The King’

In 2018 Chalamet appeared in Hostiles as a French immigrant cavalry soldier in the Old West, alongside Bale and Rosamund Pike, and lost 20 pounds to play a meth addict in Beautiful Boy, with Steve Carell. The following year he portrayed Henry V in The King, based on William Shakespeare’s “Henriad” plays, before reuniting with Gerwig for Little Women.

#MeToo, Time’s Up and Woody Allen

Another film that prominently features Chalamet is Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day In New York City. Chalamet filmed his scenes — with co-stars Selena Gomez and Elle Fanning — in 2017. However, the advent of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, which called out the sexual harassment, assault, discrimination and predatory behavior that many powerful figures (predominantly men) have gotten away with in both the film industry and society at large, drew attention to Allen’s past and raised questions for Chalamet about his choice to sign on with Allen.

Allen’s adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, has said that he sexually assaulted her when she was seven years old. Allen has always denied these allegations, and for years Hollywood’s top talent continued to appear in his movies. But that has since changed, and in a January 2018 Instagram post, Chalamet wrote, “I am learning that a good role isn’t the only criteria for accepting a job — that has become much clearer to me in the past few months, having witnessed the birth of a powerful movement intent on ending injustice, inequality and above all, silence.”

Chalamet’s Instagram post also shared that he was going to donate his salary from Allen’s film to the Time’s Up campaign, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network and New York’s LGBT Center, making him one of many actors who have donated their salaries from Allen films. In the post, Chalamet also stated he could not say more due to contractual obligations (though reports have questioned whether his contract actually prevented his speaking out).

Chalamet also expressed his support for Time’s Up at the 2018 SAG Awards, telling E! News, “With the centralization, the Time’s Up movement and hopefully at award shows like this, conversation’s getting out there. Equality in the workplace, 50/50 by 2020, these are messages that are getting out there now.”

When Was Timothée Chalamet Born?

Timothée Chalamet was born on December 27, 1995, in New York City.

Dating History

In 2013 Chalamet was sometimes seen out with Lourdes Leon, a high school classmate who is Madonna’s daughter. The two also appeared together in a school production of Sweet Charity.

When a 2017 interview with The Guardian veered into talk about relationships, Chalamet said, “I have experienced heartbreak but not in a classical sense.” He then added, “I have this sense of independent heartbreak, of annulling romances before they get their feet off the ground… with one girl in particular…” He’s also told W magazine, “Date is very much a scary word, because then that context has been established.”

Red carpet events haven’t revealed much of Chalamet’s romantic life — in 2018 he took his mother to the SAG Awards and attended the Golden Globes with his sister — though he was spotted smooching The King actress Lily-Rose Depp that October. In April 2020, it was reported that Chalamet and Depp had ended their largely private relationship.

How Do You Say Timothée Chalamet’s Name?

The French pronunciation for Timothée would be “Tim-oh-TAY,” though Chalamet goes by Timothy (to friends he’s Timmy). Chalamet is said as “SHALL-uh-MAY.”

Chalamet has joked that being famous makes it more likely people will correctly spell his name.

Family and Background

Chalamet grew up in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. His French father was an editor who worked for Unicef, while his American mother was a dancer and Broadway performer. A young Chalamet developed an enthusiasm for everything from Broadway plays to sports. Growing up, he spent summers in France with his family.

Chalamet’s older sister, Pauline, is also an actress. He has many other family ties to showbiz — aunt Amy Lippman is a producer and writer whose projects include Party of Five and Masters of Sex; uncle Rodman Flender works as a TV director; and his grandfather was screenwriter and novelist Harold Flender. In addition to his family, Chalamet has credited the time he was 12 and saw Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight with him wanting to become an actor.

School and Education

Chalamet attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, the Manhattan school that inspired the movie and TV show Fame. Chalamet took his school’s performing arts focus into other classes, such as when he made a rap video — as “Lil’ Timmy Tim” — about statistics.

Ansel Elgort was one of Chalamet’s high school classmates; on one red carpet, Chalamet and Elgort each said the other was more popular in school. Their drama teacher told Vanity Fair, “They were both like rock stars in a way, in a school full of rock stars. Everybody recognized them as being particularly gifted.”

After graduating, Chalamet spent a year at Columbia University. However, while talking to McConaughey for Interview magazine, Chalamet admitted he “floundered” there because it was difficult to return to the strictures of school after getting to make movies. Chalamet also set up his own major at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

Chalamet is now navigating a breakthrough career; as he told GQ magazine in 2017, “All this stuff’s very new — I’m trying to keep a journal and really remember this time of my life. It feels special.”

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 1995
• Birth date: December 27, 1995
• Birth State: New York
• Birth City: New York City
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Timothée Chalamet is an American actor who’s made a splash with films like ‘Lady Bird’ and ‘Call Me By Your Name.’
• Astrological Sign: Capricorn
• Schools
• New York University
• Columbia University
• Nacionalities
• American

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