The high school that turned Timothée Chalamet down, until one teacher overruled it
LaGuardia, New York's famous performing arts school, rejected Timothée Chalamet after his interview. A drama teacher who had watched his audition refused to accept that, gave him the best score he had ever awarded an applicant, and got him in. A decade later Chalamet was an Oscar nominee at twenty-two.
Chalamet was born on December 27, 1995, and raised in Hell's Kitchen, in Manhattan Plaza, a subsidised Manhattan block set aside for artists. His mother had danced on Broadway; his father, Marc, comes from Nîmes and reports from New York for Le Parisien. Summers were spent with his grandparents in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a village in France, and he grew up bilingual with both American and French citizenship. Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight is what made him want to act.
College did not stick. He spent a year at Columbia studying cultural anthropology, moved to the Gallatin School at NYU for more freedom, then left altogether to concentrate on acting and stay clear of student debt. Television came first: a murder victim on Law & Order in 2009, then the Vice President's rebellious son in Homeland. His first film year, 2014, included a small part as Matthew McConaughey's son in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. He later called it his favourite of his films, but admitted it had not lifted his career the way he had hoped.
The breakthrough was Call Me by Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino, which he had been attached to for three years. To play Elio he learned Italian, piano and guitar. After its 2017 Sundance premiere he collected a Best Actor Oscar nomination, becoming the third-youngest nominee in that category and the youngest since Mickey Rooney in 1939. Supporting turns for Greta Gerwig in Lady Bird and Little Women followed.
Big budgets came next, with Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve's Dune films and the title role in Wonka. Playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown earned him the SAG prize, and Josh Safdie's table tennis comedy Marty Supreme brought the Golden Globe and Critics' Choice awards, each making him its youngest winner. Films he has led have taken more than 2.3 billion US dollars worldwide.
Source: Timothée Chalamet
