At 26 Timothée Chalamet is already a consummate cool as they come movie star. As he gets set to become the actor of his generation Giles Hattersley goes in search of the real boy wonder. Photographs by Steven Meisel. Styling by Edward Enninful.
He arrives a princeling in jeans and a rock metal T shirt bounding sprite like from one of those blacked out Cadillac tanks preferred by the famous reluctant or otherwise. Its June in New York and Timothée Chalamets hometown is gently sweltering. But for once the paps are nowhere to be seen and so his body language is a joy to behold as he bounces into Champs a vegan diner in Brooklyn somehow channelling both a street style star and Buster Keaton.
We are shooting a Vogue video. He enters with curls un frizzed a smile that reaches all the way to his eyes and a head to shoulder ratio rarely glimpsed outside of childrens drawings. In a swift half decade this publicity averse sensitive ambitious inscrutable dreamer has become both art house stalwart Call Me by Your Name and box office king Dune. Then something odder certainly rarer occurred. A baton was placed in his hand passed down the decades by dint of James Dean and River Phoenix David Cassidy and Leonardo DiCaprio Chalamet became boyfriend to an entire generation. In fact it was DiCaprio in a moment of near literal baton passing when they first met in 2018 who bequeathed Timmy his career rule No hard drugs and no superhero movies. So far so good. Give or take. Oh, to be 26 and Hollywood’s most wanted.
And wow do they want him. I he says laughing, unsure what to do with that information. It should be noted that Chalamets default setting is uncertainty. Thoughtful courteous smart? Absolutely. Able to articulate a definite opinion about anything? Absolutely not.
Never mind. The charm is very real We met before he says recalling some 3am dance floor adjacent small talk we had a few years ago. Far from the navel gazing f**k boy the internet occasionally likes to paint him as he has checked my Instagram and read some past interviews. Immediately he wants to talk about Lady Gaga who he does not know but finds fascinating. He is a rare interviewee albeit a classic deflector in that he much prefers to ask the questions Where are you staying? What did you think of the London production of] Cabaret? How are you feeling?
Of course once the recorder is running the fidgeting begins in earnest. But for Luca anything he says of Luca Guadagnino auteur supreme in whose Bones & All Chalamet stars this autumn as cannibal drifter Lee. Part road movie, part addiction allegory, he plays opposite Taylor Russell on a bloodied nomadic flee through America. It is a performance so pristinely heartbreaking so tenderly horrific so violent and vulnerable it feels as his work so often does like he has carved out a new genre of man.
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