Timothée Chalamet‘s ascendancy to stardom might have looked completely different if he had followed the advice of his agent early in his career. In a new interview, the Dune star and unofficial spokesperson for this past season’s “Rat Boy Summer” revealed that he was encouraged to bulk up while auditioning for roles in YA movies.
Speaking with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe (via Variety), Chalamet reflected on the start of his career and the advice his agent gave him to help him land bigger parts:
“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… I had an agent that called me and said, you got to put on weight…”
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Rather than build a body for a role, Chalamet opted for the actor’s approach to landing projects. By acting. While he would go on to land huge leading roles in the Dune movie series and Wonka, a look at his filmography leading up to those parts is a showcase of more intimate personal projects. His characters in Lady Bird, Little Women, and Call Me By Your Name mercifully didn’t require a Marvel-esque physique, although some water-wasting AI or an imagination could probably render what that would look like.
The New Hollywood Look
It started with the teeth. Incredibly high beauty standards are not new in Hollywood as the quasar-white veneers of many celebrities would indicate. But as the age of superhero movies dawned in the 2010s, the demand for more muscular bodies in the industry grew to carry large franchises of all kinds. Even if studios have never expressly ordered actors to achieve these bodies, the cultural panopticon continues to reinforce a specific standard that Chalamet is glad he eschewed. As an impressive yet bland uniform aesthetic becomes the norm, counter-cultural phenomena like “Rat Boy Summer” show that perhaps people are wanting more interesting looks from their leading men.
While speaking of his indie film beginnings, Chalamet said:
“Those were smaller budget, but very — I don’t know how else to put it — personable movies that started in this theater space. This is where I found my rhythm, my confidence, my flow, whatever you want to call it.”
Chalamet, who is playing Bob Dylan in the upcoming music biopic A Complete Unknown, related his experience carving his own path in the movie industry to Dylan’s journey into music, saying, “I found my way into these very personalized movies. 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.” The movie chronicles the legendary singer-songwriter’s controversial transition from acoustic to electric guitars in the 1960s. Chalamet’s casting was announced in 2020.
Not listening to his agent’s advice and taking more intimate roles has proven, in the long run, to be an equally lucrative career trajectory, as Dune parts One and Two have together grossed well over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. A Complete Unknown lands in theaters on December 25, 2024.
- Release Date
- December 25, 2024
- Cast
- Timothée Chalamet , Edward Norton , Elle Fanning , Monica Barbaro , Nick Offerman , Boyd Holbrook , P.J. Byrne , Scoot McNairy , Dan Fogler , Will Harrison , Charlie Tahan , Jon Gennari , Norbert Leo Butz