The film industry was flipped on its head when Timothée Chalamet’s heartbroken Elio wept on an Italian hearth for three full minutes as the credits for “Call Me By Your Name” rolled — that, of course, and the peach scene. Touted as a once-in-a-generation talent, Chalamet has dominated the big screen in seminal films like Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” and Luco Guadagnino’s “Bones and All.” The shattering of hearts echoed around the world when he played the real-life methamphetamine addict, Nic Sheff, in 2018’s “Beautiful Boy,” opposite Steve Carrell. 

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For how raw and open Chalamet is on-screen, the actor is fairly private about his personal life. His relationship with Kylie Jenner has consumed headlines since they announced their unlikely romance — Chalamet is a fourth-generation New Yorker and Jenner a California-born reality star. The NYU graduate acknowledges how his fevered fans are the catalyst of his career, and he struggles with setting boundaries while simultaneously expressing utmost gratitude for his fame. “Sometimes, people are going to be hella confused when you say you’re trying to live a private life,” he said in a 2023 GQ interview.

For this reason, there isn’t much said about Chalamet’s transformation from a dual-citizen child, bouncing from New York to France, to an esteemed, Academy Award-nominated actor, who has certainly put in his 10,000 hours. The details we do know about Chalamet uncover somewhat of a tragic past.

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Timothée Chalamet’s attraction is only heightened by the fact that the actor can speak fluent French. That is because his father, journalist Marc Chalamet, is a France native. His mom, Nicole Flender, on the other hand, is a New Yorker, which meant Chalamet often flip-flopped between Manhattan and France — ultimately causing a bit of existentialism in his youth. During a BAFTA panel of 2018 Rising Star award nominees, Chalamet noted (via Metro), “I always feel tremendous ambiguity in the self-identity department, which is maybe not great for mental health.”

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Chalamet further explained his inner turmoil with SilverKris Magazine in 2019, saying: “I totally suffered an identity crisis [living between the United States and France as a child]. It’s weird for a kid to spend eight months of the year in a place like Manhattan, then spend the other four in a small French village.”

The oft-optimistic actor eventually found a reason to appreciate his transient upbringing, telling the magazine, “The cultural dissociation has certainly helped me as an actor, though, and I am convinced it helped me win the part of Elio [in ‘Call Me By Your Name’].”

Timothée Chalamet didn’t dream of becoming an actor. In an episode of “60 Minutes,” the “Dune” star told Anderson Cooper that growing up around actors made him tentative to join the industry. As a kid, living in a Manhattan apartment complex swirling with artists of every kind of media, Chalamet said, “This building, truthfully, made me scared of acting because it’s a tough lifestyle.” For Chalamet, the aforementioned “tough lifestyle” was intensified by the onslaught of internet users who freely voice their opinions on the actor and his work. One Google search will provide a scrolling list of headlines bashing the actor, including “Timothée Chalamet Must Be Stopped!” and “The Problem With Timothée Chalamet.”

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“To be young now is to be intensely judged,” Chalamet shrewdly exclaimed during a press conference at the 2022 Venice Film Festival (via Deadline). “I think societal collapse is in the air, it smells like it, and without being pretentious, I hope that’s why these movies matter because that’s the role of the artist is to shine a light on what’s going on.” Most of the characters Chalamet has played are fortunately devoid of the consequences of the digital world — something Chalamet is not so fortunate to have.

It is specifically social media that Timothée Chalamet blames for the downfall of society. He spoke with ShortList magazine about being a part of the “MySpace generation.” He said: “We were the guinea pigs for that first wave of social media. There comes a process of self-evaluation and self-recognition that is comparable to a mirror being put in front of you. Generations past never had to do that kind of critical assessment, what does my MySpace font and layout say about me?” And while he says he has developed “a kind of dumbness to it,” he finds solace in escaping the pressure of social media through his film characters.

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“It was a relief to play characters who are wrestling with an internal dilemma absent the ability to go on Reddit or Twitter or Instagram or TikTok and figure out where they fit in,” he said during the Venice Film Festival.

Chalamet’s social media tirade is reflected in the content he posts on his profiles. When he’s not promoting new projects — like “Dune: Part Two” or “A Complete Unknown,” as of this writing — Chalamet shares odd and often cryptic posts with his 20 million followers on Instagram, which are either jocularly ridiculing the conventions of social media or they are artistic brainchildren he needs to birth in between films.

Timothée Chalamet’s filmography is defined by the distinct characters he plays. His Bob Dylan voice was practiced to perfection before shooting “A Complete Unknown.” But it may have been an easier feat compared to the research he did before playing a teenager hooked on crystal meth in the 2018 drama “Beautiful Boy.” The story is based on the harrowing life of David Sheff and his methamphetamine addicted son, Nic Sheff, which they chronicled in two memoirs: “Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction,” by David, and “Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines,” by Nic.

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“Every question he asked was so insightful,” Nic revealed to Deadline of Chalamet. “I could tell that he’d done a ton of research about what addiction looks like, and what these drugs actually do to your body. Even in terms of what the physicality of the detox process is like.” That’s likely because Chalamet felt an intense sense of responsibility to not only the character, but the story that’s actually a reality to so many.

“I feel the pressure of wanting to get ‘Beautiful Boy’ out there,” Chalamet told the outlet, specifically calling attention to his generation of drug addicts. “We’re going through this, and inherent to that is the difficulty of discussing something that is really upsetting and devastating to a lot of families. But I think that’s the importance of art and movies.”

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Locked down and suffering from what he refers to as “tribe-lessness,” Timothée Chalamet was thrust into an overwhelming period of mourning when his grandmother died during the COVID pandemic. Chalamet was seemingly very close with his grandmother; the actor shared clues about their doting relationship in interviews and TikTok videos. He told the South China Morning Post in 2023 that his sense of isolation while filming “Bones and All” during the pandemic only worsened when he got the news about his grandmother.

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“It was a crisis for me, I was looking for myself – just like Lee [his “Bones” character] – but during the pandemic, I felt totally blocked off from the world,” he said. “Even now I find myself struggling to get over that feeling.” His grandmother was a professional dancer turned school teacher. Most of her kin were involved in the art world, which is something that helped Chalamet define his identity.

“I lost my grandmother this year,” he said during the 2022 Venice Film Festival. “As I realized that she was passing, my Mom and I were talking about ‘Kiss Me, Kate'” (a musical in which his grandmother once performed). “As someone that struggled with who my tribe was … I realized — through my grandmother’s passing — we’re show people, theater people, and actors. I felt at home in that moment.”

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