An Oscar-nominated performer, Timothée Chalamet ventured into music through lead parts in the 2023 musical Wonka and the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. The latter production, issued with a condensed soundtrack album in late 2024, featured 40 Dylan compositions, every one captured live during shooting by Chalamet alongside his fellow cast members.
Born in New York City to a household steeped in the arts—dance, filmmaking, acting, and writing among its callings—Timothée Hal Chalamet possesses dual citizenship through an American mother and French father while remaining fluent in both languages. (Though formally pronounced "Tim-oh-teh Shall-ah-meh," he answers to "Timothy" throughout the United States.) After being galvanized by Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight, he began acting in his teens and soon secured parts in short films, television programs such as Law & Order and Homeland, and eventually independent features. He gained admission to New York’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where he appeared in school productions of Cabaret and Sweet Charity. While filming Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), Chalamet enrolled at Columbia University for one year before moving to New York University’s more adaptable independent-study track; he ultimately left higher education behind, receiving an Academy Award nomination in 2018 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for 2017’s Call Me by Your Name.
He subsequently built a filmography that includes Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Little Women, Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, and the expansive Dune franchise, drawing on his musical-theater experience for 2023’s Wonka. Between Dune: Pt. 2 and Pt. 3, Chalamet portrayed Bob Dylan in the December 2024 biographical drama A Complete Unknown, adapted from Elijah Wald’s 2015 volume Dylan Goes Electric!. Spanning 1961 to 1965, the picture incorporated no fewer than 40 Dylan numbers, each recorded live on vintage microphones and instruments during principal photography, with Chalamet supplying vocals, guitar, and harmonica. (Among the supporting players were Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash.) Following its limited openings in Los Angeles and New York, the film reached wide release on December 25. Columbia issued the companion soundtrack over the ensuing two months in multiple configurations, among them a 16-track vinyl pressing and a 23-song compact disc.
