Timothée Chalamet : “Cynicism is stronger today than in the sixties”

Wherever he goes, the 29-year-old French-American actor creates a stir and unleashes passions. We can still remember the phenomenal promotional success of Dune Part II last year, or that time when he invited himself to his own look-alike contest in New York in October 2024… and came away empty-handed but smiling. On January 14th, 2025, at the London premiere of the new film A Perfect Stranger, Timothée Chalamet arrived on the red carpet wearing a suit and psychedelic Martine Rose shirt riding a Lime electric bike. While he set the audience and the social media on fire, he unfortunately was fined for bad parking…

The following day, he emerged incognito with a cap on his head, sporting a Chanel look at the crossroads of streetwear and rock, to promote the same film at the Grand Rex in Paris. Even though his face was hidden under this accessory, the actor triggered hysteria among the crowd of fans who had come to greet him and ask for autographs or hugs.

Interview with Timothée Chalamet for A Perfect Stranger in Paris

On Wednesday 16th of January 2025, Numéro met the young man off set, who seemed rather shy, humble and reserved. In one of the elegant lounges of the Bristol in Paris, Timothée Chalamet came to talk to the press about the very successful biopic devoted to the early years of Bob Dylan.

Alongside magnetic actress Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez in the film), Edward Norton (who plays musician Pete Seeger) and director James Mangold, he answered the journalists’ questions in an almost faultless French – even though he pointed out that he usually has to stay in France for several days before mastering the language again and avoiding awkward turns of phrase sometimes. Some of his confessions will thus remain as poetic as they are enigmatic, like this one: “I’m almost 30, and I’m less and less afraid of life. The world is strange enough already, so why choose to lead a life centered around fear?”

Often looking down as if to downplay his mega-star status, yet displaying an irresistible smile and casualness, the actor revealed by the film Call Me by Your Name (2018) and who rarely gives interviews passionately recounted what went on behind the scenes of A Perfect Stranger, out in cinemas on January 29th, 2025.

Dressed in low-rise baggy jeans paired with an ultra-pop black and green polka-dot jumper, the actor first addressed the million reasons why this major project resonated with him and made him want to slip into the skin of the folk legend before he became the icon of a entire generation known for its anti-war anthems.

The film takes us back to the early 1960s, when Robert Allen Zimmerman, the hugely talented songwriter with a nasal voice, was not yet Dylan, the Nobel Prize recipient. At the time, he was trying to make a name for himself in the flourishing, activist scene in New York, playing gig after gig in cafés and connecting with important people, Johnny Cash included.

“It’s the role that has had the biggest impact on me in my entire career.” Timothée Chalamet

“I was first contacted for this project in 2018 or 2019, when my career started taking off,” Timothée Chalamet recalls, before adding: “They sent me some research material on Bob Dylan that immediately interested me, especially interviews from his debuts (which can be watched on YouTube), where he showed himself to be confrontational and mysterious. I liked his interviews before even listening to his music. You wouldn’t do interviews like these nowadays, with bizarre answers that don’t make any sense.” The musician had a reputation for being difficult in interviews, answering questions in the wrong way or simply in one sentence.

In addition to the very secretive and cunning/unsettling aspects of the character, the actor also shared his love for “his music, what he represented in the 1960s in the United States, Japan and France.” “Five years and a half later, I can say that this is the role that has had the biggest impact on me in my entire career. I’m proud of all my films, but this one has influenced me on a personal level,” he added. A transformative experience that has enabled him to behave differently both as a man and as an artist.

Yet Bob Dylan’s songs were not entirely familiar to the man who learned to play the guitar, the harmonica and to sing for his role as the songwriter of the pacifist track Blowin’ in the Wind. “I grew up listening to streaming music on ITunes, like rap, hip-hop, pop, between 2008 and 2009. Thanks to this film and to Bob Dylan, I opened up to other artists from the sixties and to less known songs from the repertoire of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.” The hero of Dune drew a link between the musical emulation of the 1960s in his home country and what happened in French cinema with the movement ‘La Nouvelle Vague’. “There was the same desire for artistic transformation in France at that time.”

The idol of Gen Z, who identifies to a more fluid masculinity, has Trad nearly 20 million followers on Instagram and dates Kylie Jenner, a big influencer, has nonetheless a real reflection on the age of mobile phones, far removed from that of Dylan. “For young people aged 18 to 25 who didn’t have this education, this culture was really a way of understanding the world. Today, it’s very difficult to get everyone in the same room,” he admitted.

“In the 1960s, young artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez or like the writer James Baldwin thought that art could change the world.” Timothée Chalamet

When asked about the differences between the time when Bob Dylan was popular and today’s American society under Trump’s administration, Timothée Chalamet was nostalgic. “In the

1960s, young artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez or the writer James Baldwin were optimistic about the fact that art could change a political aspect or a cultural attitude (because there was no precedent). It’s different today since cynicism is stronger than before. For the younger generations, the obstacles are perhaps greater than those that existed in the 1960s, especially regarding politics and climate change.”

The actor who embodied Wonka then added: “It would be nice if a figure like Bob Dylan came along today. But every time someone releases a film or a song that aims at changing things in an optimistic way, it is done in a way that can be labelled as too ‘corporate’.”

Playing Bob Dylan: a major challenge

Before A Perfect Stranger, there was Todd Haynes’ excellent I’m Not There (2007), starring Cate Blanchett, inspired by various segments of the singer’s life. Singer Cat Power even reenacted a cult concert of the music icon during which he betrays the folk cause by playing rock music – a central passage in James Mangold’s feature.

While Timothée Chalamet agrees that Hollywood is full of biopics, brilliantly slips into the skin of a complex, compelling version of the indecipherable and rebellious author of protest songs – passionate, inhabited, determined, lonely, tormented and arrogant . Yet, it didn’t come easily. was not without its pitfalls.

To become the Bob Dylan of the 60s who falls under the spell of Joan Baez, the actor admits to having come up against a lack of visual references. At the press conference, he explained: ‘There is more documentary material about Dylan in 63, 64, 65 than in the early 60s. There wasn’t much available then, especially on video, apart from demos. Even historians and Bob’s mega-fans know less about that period.’

‘I would have loved to have met Bob Dylan and I still want to.’ Timothée Chalamet

The actor also admits: ‘I was more familiar with Dylan’s rock music, from ’65, than with his folk music before I started this film. But there’s a lot of freedom when you’re alone with your guitar playing folk music. You can find your own rhythm and take your time. I felt the more well-known songs like Like a Rolling Stone were a trap.’

Timothée Chalamet confides that Bob Dylan deserved to be given 150% to play in a film. Although he immersed himself fully in the lifestyle of the 60s, going so far as to switch off his phone and cut himself off from social networks during filming, the actor never actually met the man he portrays with such accuracy and nuance. ‘I would have loved to have met him

and I still want to. But my respect for Bob Dylan is greater than my desire to meet him. I’ve realised that he’s a mysterious person, who’s not really into the public side of things and who’s not going to make any new friends at 83!

A few weeks ago on X (formerly Twitter), Bob Dylan was full of praise for Timothée Chalamet, calling the actor Timmy and describing him as a brilliant actor, while declaring that he was convinced he would look great on screen in his suede jackets. It is not known whether the composer, painter and poet has since seen the film. But one thing is certain: he could have written his song I Contain Multitudes for the hero of Dune, Wonka and Bones and All, so many facets and possibilities are contained within him.

A Perfect Stranger by James Mangold, starring Timothée Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro and Edward Norton, now in theaters.

Traduction Emma Naroumbo Armaing.