Timothée Chalamet has said that he put on 20 pounds in order to play Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.
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In a recent interview with NPR, Chalamet described the lengths he went for the role: “I’ve turned over every stone. I did all the work, like you just described, physicality, behavior-wise.”
This included gaining weight. “Something we haven’t really talked about, I also put on 20 pounds because, believe it or not, I was thinner than the guy.”
Per Variety, Chalamet had previously acknowledged feedback about his physique in past auditions.
“If I auditioned for The Maze Runner or Divergent, things of that variety that were popping when I was coming up, the feedback was always, ‘Oh, you don’t have the right body,’” he once told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, adding that he instead sought “more personalized” roles in films like Lady Bird and Little Women that gave him the confidence to pursue leading man fare.
Chalamet recently received a Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of Dylan. It’s his second Oscar nod, after also receiving a Best Actor nomination for his role in Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 romantic drama Call Me By Your Name. Both Chalamet vehicles, A Complete Unknown and Dune: Part Two, are also nominated for Best Picture.
For the Dylan role, he also learned how to play his songs. He showed off this skill in his recent Saturday Night Live appearance, where he performed Dylan cuts like a full-band version of ‘Outlaw Blues’ from 1965’s classic ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, which then transitioned into ‘Three Angels’ from 1970’s ‘New Morning’, for which James Blake joined on piano.
NME gave the film a four-star review, with Alex Flood writing: “The most important (and often trickiest) job of any music movie is to get the music right. And this nails that. If you’re a Bob newbie, you’ll leave the cinema ready to dive into his back catalogue.”
“If you’re already a fan, the next few weeks will be spent making playlists of lesser-known B-sides or reading the lore around a scene you weren’t familiar with. And that’s why it was a good idea to make this film – a mad idea, but a good one.”
Chalamet drew some attention to himself recently when he rode a Lime bike into the London premiere of the musical biopic, and was then fined for doing so.
The actor last hosted SNL in 2023, when he impersonated legendary director Martin Scorsese and was joined by boygenius in a sketch where all four were dressed up as Troye Sivan, parodying his ‘Got Me Started’ dance.
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