Bob Dylan Praised Timothée Chalamet’s Acting Ahead of ‘A Complete Unknown’
This December, Timothée Chalamet will portray Bob Dylan in the film A Complete Unknown. The actor spent years preparing for the role and said he became a Dylan fanatic in the process. It seems that Dylan has also become a fan of Chalamet’s work. In a post on social media, Dylan praised Dylan’s skill as an actor.
Bob Dylan spoke highly of Timothée Chalamet’s acting
When director James Mangold began working on A Complete Unknown, he had a conversation with Dylan.
“The first time I sat down with him, Bob said, ‘What’s this movie about, Jim?’” Mangold said in a separate interview with Rolling Stone. “I said, ‘It’s about a guy who’s choking to death in Minnesota, and leaves behind all his friends and family and reinvents himself in a brand new place, makes new friends, builds a new family, becomes phenomenally successful, starts to choke to death again — and runs away.”
Dylan approved of this take on his early years. He later gave his stamp of approval on the actor who would portray him.
“Timothée Chalamet is starring in the lead role,” Dylan wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter). “Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me. The film’s taken from Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric – a book that came out in 2015. It’s a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport. After you’ve seen the movie read the book.”
Chalamet responded to Dylan’s post with gratitude.
“Floored,” he posted. “I am so grateful. Thank you Bob.”
Timothée Chalamet said he fully immersed himself in the role
Chalamet said he took his role as Dylan very seriously. He often went to bed in a panic over his portrayal.
“It was something I would go to sleep panicked about, losing a moment of discovery as the character — no matter how pretentious that sounds — because I was on my phone or because of any distraction,” he told Rolling Stone. “I had three months of my life to play Bob Dylan, after five years of preparing to play him. So while I was in it, that was my eternal focus.”
He said he wanted to do right by Dylan in the film.
“He deserved that and then more … God forbid I missed a step because I was being Timmy,” he said. “I could be Timmy for the rest of my life!”
He impressed his co-stars
According to Chalamet’s co-stars, his arduous preparation paid off. Edward Norton, who plays Pete Seeger, spoke highly of Chalamet’s performance. Elle Fanning, who plays Dylan’s girlfriend Sylvie Russo, said his singing voice took her breath away.
“We were in an auditorium, and I was sitting amongst all these background artists,” she said. “[Director James Mangold] would let Timmy come out and give the crowd a whole concert. He was singing ‘Masters of War’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ and I was like, ‘Jesus.’”
She thought it was a perfectly done take on Dylan’s singing.
“All of us were kind of shaking, because it was so surreal hearing someone do that,” she said. “So perfectly done, but it wasn’t a caricature. It was still Timmy, but it’s Bob, and this kind of beautiful meld. That gave me chills.”
A Complete Unknown comes to theaters on Dec. 25.
