HUNGRY FOR CONNECTION
After meaty roles in a sci-fi blockbuster, period dramas and a coming-of-age romance made him this generation’s biggest male star, ever-versatile Timothée Chalamet next sinks his teeth into playing a disaffected cannibal in Bones and All
Timothée Chalamet is one of the most talented actors in Hollywood – of any age. His leading role
in Dune, the critically acclaimed 2021 sci-fi film
that went on to earn more than US$400 million
at the box-office, solidified his status as a highly
bankable A-list star with a very lucreatuve future
ahead. And he’s only 26 years old.
Now Chalamet is set to appear in
All, directed by Luca Gaudagnino, the same Italian
director who helped him secure his first Oscar
nomination after casting him in the aching, artsy
gay romance Call Me By Your Name.
Bones and
Bones and All takes Chalamet on a very
different journey that is part drama, part romance
and part horror. He plays Lee, a disaffected
hipster drifter who finds solace in the company of
18-year-old Maren (rising actress Taylor Russell),
despairing of her life in a trailer park. Together,
they embark on a journey across America as a
couple of lost souls who feed their existential
hunger as vampire-like cannibals. Yes, cannibals.
“To be young now is to be intensely judged
… it’s tough to be alive now,” mused Chalamet
while promoting the film at its world premiere at
the Venice Film Festival in September. “It was a
relief to play characters who are wrestling with an
internal dilemma, absent the ability to go on Reddit
or Twitter or Instagram or TikTok and figure out
where they fit in … They’re searching for their tribe.
“A big part of this story [is about] tribelessness,
being cut off from the social contact
that helps us understand where we are in the
world. Not that we’re attention-hungry narcissistic
beings, but nonetheless you need that contact
to understand where you are and I felt a similar
disillusionment that I think Lee was feeling in the
script at that point.”
Chalamet, arguably, doesn’t have much to
be disilussioned about. Dune director Denis
Villeneuve hailed him as the “best actor of his
generation”, adding “I needed that rock star
charisma”. Certainly, audiences who see him
in Bones and All will find themselves strangely
attached to Lee’s flesh-eating ennui as he and
his soulmate Maren traipse across the existential
emptiness of the American Midwest.
Chalamet is the son of a French journalist
father and an American dancer mother. He grew
up in New York entertaining thoughts of becoming
an actor from an early age, and at 14 was
accepted into New York’s prestigious LaGuardia
School for performing arts that inspired the 1980
hit film Fame. He made his feature film debut
in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) when
he was 17 and has also appeared in 2019’s The
King and Little Women, and last year’s ensemble
comedy drama, The French Dispatch, directed by
Wes Anderson. He will soon begin work on the
sequel to Dune – and as a bilingual actor also
fluent in French, he’s spoken about his desire to
one day work in international productions.
STYLE: Was it easy for you to identify with how Lee and Maren feel cut off from society?
CHALAMET: Working on this film during the pandemic helped me feel the kind of alienation
To be young now is to be intensely judged … it’s tough to be alive now
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET
PROFESSION
Actor
WORDS OF INSPIRATION
I want to make movies that matter and speak to
and isolation that are themes of the film, and the kind of states of
mind that a lot of people, and especially my generation, feel about
the world today.
As I get older, these are the stories I want to tell, these stories
are about disenfranchised people who are disenfranchised
existentially too, and feel they have no path in front of them.
You’ve spoken about Lee and Maren’s need to find their
tribe. What do you mean by that?
I’ve found my tribe in New York, in Europe, even in
Jerusalem. It’s been important for me to understand that there
are many people like me in the world. I also found my tribe when I
arrived very young in Italy to work with Luca. We became friends and
now we’ve gotten to know each other again.
For me, finding a tribe means finding someone like me anywhere
A lot of young people have this fear of judgment and self-judgment – what others will think
I was very attached, and that left me feeling even
more isolated.
It was a crisis for me, I was looking for myself
– just like Lee – but during the pandemic I felt
totally blocked off from the world. Even now I find
myself struggling to get over that feeling.
STYLE: Can you elaborate on that sense of being an outsider?
CHALAMET: In the overwhelming digital age that we’re in, a lot of young people have this fear of
judgment and self-judgment – what others will
think. And this story is about two people that have
a curse that is so awful and – thank God people in
the real world don’t have this burden – but these
two people are forced to grapple with it.
This is how they find each other and their
inherent humanity is confirmed by each other in
a way that maybe they didn’t believe was possible
before they met.
STYLE: What do you think is the nature of their love for each other?
CHALAMET: I agree with something that Taylor (co-star Russell) said: that love can be a protector
of your love. We often think that love is supposed
to burn red and be this crazy, fiery experience, but
it can also be an act of protection through devotion
and it can be boring but still very important.
STYLE: You grew up in a family of artists. When did you decide to commit to acting?
CHALAMET: I had been acting since 2014 when Jason Reitman cast me for a role in Men, Women
& Children, but, after working in several TV
series, such as Homeland, I enrolled at Columbia
University after graduating from high school.
At that point I was getting so many offers
to work in film that it made it difficult for me to
pursue my studies in literature. I think I already
knew after Christopher Nolan hired me to play in
Interstellar that acting was my real ambition in
life. But it wasn’t until I did Lady Bird (2017) and
my experience working with outstanding actors
like Saoirse Ronan and Lucas Hedges. I learned
so much from them and also from Greta Gerwig,
the director, that I decided that I would totally
dedicate myself to acting.
STYLE: How do you see your career evolving in terms of the films you would like to make?
CHALAMET: I want to make movies that matter and speak to people. It think it’s the role of the
artist to shine a light on what’s going on.