Timothée Chalamet, nominee for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Marty Supreme, attends the 98th Oscars Nominees Luncheon in Beverly Hills, California on Feb. 10.Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Does Timothée Chalamet bug you, even if you can’t say exactly why?
In a highly unscientific poll of everyone I know, most respondents were hard on the 30-year-old, who returns to the Oscars this month with his third best actor nomination – for playing a ping-pong pro in Marty Supreme – after previous nods for Call Me By Your Name and A Complete Unknown. They call him cringe, and claim that he’s too “Pick me, pick me.” They slag him as a “try-hard” burdened with “phone face.”
They didn’t like that he announced, “I’m in pursuit of greatness,” when he won the Screen Actors Guild Award for playing Bob Dylan. They tsk-ed when he told Anderson Cooper he was “going Daniel Day-Lewis” on his roles. They scorn his bragging to IndieWire that he gives “top-of-the-line performances.” They hint that the dickish roles he chooses might not be a stretch.
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Plus, they’re over his manic 21st-century promotion blitzkriegs. Last year, shilling A Complete Unknown, Chalamet wooed influencers Theo Von and Brittany Broski; crashed his own lookalike contest in Manhattan; bro-ed out about college football on ESPN; dropped in on the University of Minnesota marching band’s practice (singing along while they played Like a Rolling Stone); and cosplayed Dylan on Saturday Night Live.
This year for Marty Supreme, in which his character uses orange ping-pong balls, he wore orange leather on the red carpet; rode in an orange blimp; posed atop the Las Vegas Sphere as it transformed into a giant ping-pong ball; posted to Insta a fake Zoom marketing meeting that he wrote and directed about “fruitionizing” the awards campaign; and, with Adam Sandler, lost a two-on-two basketball game against high-school students. Haters even call his romance with Kylie Jenner just a performance for social media.
Timothée Chalamet surprised guests at an underground table tennis tournament, The Marty Supreme Invitational, on Dec. 18 in New York.Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
I, however, care about precisely none of that. For me, all that matters is this: Chalamet is a genuinely good actor who commits wholeheartedly to his work. I’m not just talking about how he practised guitar (for Dylan) and ping-pong (for Marty) for six years, or how he’s learning motocross for his next James Mangold movie. I’m talking about the performances.
Think about the lingering last shot of Call Me By Your Name, or the way he makes you believe with just his face that his hand is being crushed inside an opaque box in Dune. Think about how vulnerable he was in Beautiful Boy and Little Women, and how strange in Bones and All. Remember how he made a skateboarding, shoplifting Evangelical into a recognizable Everydude in Don’t Look Up, and recall that even die-hard skeptics had to admit that he embodied Bob Dylan.
Timothée Chalamet starred as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown.Searchlight Pictures
The question is, will his third nomination win the day, against Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke, Michael B. Jordan and Wagner Moura? The average age of Academy voters hovers around 60 – they may not know or care as much about Chalamet’s cringe factor as movie fans do. The producers and studio execs among them want their actors to do promotion; they may applaud Chalamet’s relentlessness on his films’ behalf.
His blunder on Feb. 21 during the CNN/Variety town hall with Matthew McConaughey was a groaner, but because the backlash grew relatively slowly and Oscar voting closed Mar. 5, he may have squeaked by.
For those who missed it, Chalamet was discussing the struggle to keep film relevant, then blurted that he didn’t want to be working in ballet or opera, which have to fight to stay alive “even though no one cares about this any more.” He knew he screwed up even as he said it, blanching and quickly adding, “all respect to the ballet and opera people out there.”
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In subsequent interviews he tried to walk it back, reminding people that he grew up in an artists’ building in Manhattan, and that his grandmother, mother and sister all danced with the New York City Ballet. But artists including Megan Fairchild, a New York City Ballet principal, chastised him on social media, and the Seattle Opera offered discounts to their weekend performances of Carmen with the promo code “Timothee.”
He faces another hurdle, too: There’s this odd consensus out there that it’s okay for women to win Best Actress Oscars when they’re young – don’t get me started on the whole best-before-date reasons why – while Best Actor winners are expected to have longer careers, and therefore shouldn’t peak too soon. (Best Supporting Actor/Actress can be won at any age.)
Chalamet was barely 22 when he was nominated for Call Me By Your Name; only two best actor nominees had been younger, Jackie Cooper and Mickey Rooney – and that was in the 1930s. Only one man won best actor before he turned 30, Adrien Brody for The Pianist, but he squeaked in: He was 29 years and 343 days old.
When Chalamet earned this third best actor nomination, he was 29, tying the record set by Marlon Brando. But in late December, Chalamet turned 30, which raises his likelihood of winning. (Although Jordan, who is 39, now feels like the front-runner.) Brando was nearly 31 when he won on his fourth nomination, for On the Waterfront; Richard Dreyfus, Nicolas Cage, James Stewart, Eddie Redmayne and Day-Lewis didn’t win until they were in their 30s, either.
When Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain) lost best actor to Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) in 2006, there was this sense that Ledger, who was just shy of 27, would have way more kicks at the can, while Hoffman, who was 38, might not. Turns out that was half-right, heartbreakingly.
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There’s another odd consensus that beautiful men won’t win until they’re older and liberated from their good looks: Brando again, but also Brad Pitt (first best actor nod, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, when he was 45), Leonardo DiCaprio (first best actor nomination at 30, for The Aviator; first win at 41, for The Revenant), Jude Law (first best actor nod for Cold Mountain when he was 34), John Travolta (two best actor nominations, no wins yet), Ryan Gosling (ditto).
Women still lust after these older guys, but men are less envious and therefore don’t begrudge their success as much. Playing against their beauty won best actress for Charlize Theron, Halle Berry and Hilary Swank, and Chalamet may have done the same by dialling down his attractiveness for Marty Supreme: wearing pock-marked prosthetic skin and unflattering, smudgy glasses with a too-strong prescription, to make him squint and to render his eyes beadier.
But getting back to Chalamet’s try-hard reputation – as a lifelong try-hard myself, I’m fascinated by why effort is considered a bad thing. When athletes throw down that they want to be the greatest, they’re lauded for it. Why are artists different?
Shouldn’t the only question be, Do they deliver on their braggadocio? Or are we so tired of social-media noise that anyone who’s visibly making a ruckus turns us off? Perhaps it’s something direr: Is the generation that finds effort cringy so despairing of having a future, so unable to hope that something matters, that the only acceptable position is to pretend not to care?
I hope not. I say, pursue that greatness with all you’ve got, Mr. Chalamet. Haters may not thank you, but the movies will.