Timothee Chalamet likened his journey to playing music legend Bob Dylan to an athletic feat. It turned into a marathon that stretched longer than the actor had expected.
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Timothee Chalamet signed up to play Bob Dylan in 2019. Then came a global pandemic and labour strikes in Hollywood, forcing two extended delays to the filming of ‘A Complete Unknown’.
‘A Complete Unknown’, the movie about Dylan’s quick rise to stardom in the early 1960s, will finally be released in theatres on Wednesday, Christmas Day, by Walt Disney’s Searchlight Pictures.
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The disruptions gave the ‘Dune’ actor more time to work out how to translate the towering figure to the big screen. Chalamet learned to play guitar and harmonica and worked with a vocal coach to evolve from his smooth ‘Wonka’ singing to Dylan’s distinctive, nasal voice.
“It was the most I’ve ever taken on,” Chalamet said in an interview, comparing the preparation to ‘the climbing of a steep hill’.
‘A Complete Unknown’ chronicles Bob Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961 at age 19, his rapid ascent in folk music circles with songs such as ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, and his divisive turn to electric rock music in 1965. The movie’s title is taken from a line in the Dylan hit ‘Like a Rolling Stone’.
Chalamet said he immersed himself in whatever video he could find of Dylan in the early ’60s, a time of political and social upheaval in the United States.
“There’s a finite amount of material available, especially in this period,” Chalamet said. “At some point, you can turn every page over. Not to say that I have, but if I haven’t I’ve come damn close to it.”
In the summer of 2023, Chalamet said, “I felt like I hit a runner’s high” in the preparation.
“I felt like my muscles were strong and I was well prepared, and that every day was sort of just chipping away slowly at this bigger thing,” he said.
Just as Chalamet was ready, Hollywood actors went on strike, and he worried that funding or casting might fall apart. The final go-ahead to start filming ‘A Complete Unknown’ came in March 2024.
DYLAN WEIGHS IN
The real-life Dylan provided input on the script to director James Mangold but never met or spoke with Chalamet, though he recently described the star as ‘a brilliant actor’.
“I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me,” Bob Dylan wrote on social media platform X.
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Chalamet’s performance has earned praise from critics and predictions that he could garner his second Oscar nomination. He and his co-star Edward Norton were nominated for the Golden Globes.
Other co-stars include Elle Fanning, who plays girlfriend Suze Rotolo who appeared on the cover of the album ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ but goes by the name Sylvie Russo in the film.
Monica Barbaro portrays singer Joan Baez, who had already landed on the cover of Time magazine when her career intersected with Dylan’s. At the time, Baez was trying to figure out how to use her platform as an activist.
“Bob came in and was kind of a mess of a boy, but also an absolute poet and brilliant lyricist, and was putting words to all of these things that she felt,” Barbaro said. “On top of his charisma, I think, she just was sort of magnetized to him.”
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Norton plays Pete Seeger, a banjo player and prominent singer of protest music who mentored Dylan.
“I think a lot of people have lost sight of who these people actually were and what they did and what they sounded like,” Norton said. “If we can get some people tuning in again, that’s probably worth the whole enterprise.”
Chalamet agreed.
Dylan is “one of these names that is iconic to my generation,” the 28-year-old said. “You know the name, but because he’s such an elusive figure and a reclusive figure … a lot of people my age don’t know the music.”
“This felt like an opportunity to be a bridge in some way and bring life to this amazing period,” he added.
