Timothée Chalamet may only by 22-years-old, but his acting career skyrocketed in 2017 and he is now seen as one of the most popular and in-demand performers of his generation. Last year, he had an Oscar nomination for his role in Call Me By Your Name and was involved in Lady Bird, which had five Oscar nominations. This year, he is following those high-profile performances with a dive into the real-life addiction drama Beautiful Boy. Chalamet plays Nic Sheff, whose memoir Tweak formed one half of the script’s inspiration, while his father’s book, Beautiful Boy, formed the other.
Chalamet said the point of the movie is to bring a matter-of-fact authenticity to the situation played out in the movie.
Part of doing that was meeting Nic himself.
“When I met [Sheff] I had read ‘Beautiful Boy’ and ‘Tweak’ and was already configuring how I was hoping to play it,” Chalamet said, according to Variety. “The thing that struck me is he is an extraordinary spirit and [has] a huge warmth of character. That’s how he’s described in ‘Beautiful Boy’ from the lens of David, his father. But in meeting him I went, ‘Wow, this is an incredible human being.’ His quick wit — you can see the machinery in his mind at pace. That was enlightening. And in playing it, he said, ‘This is a representation of my family’s story. I don’t expect this to be exactly what it was.’ To hear that was, man, what a gift. It was understood that we weren’t doing a biopic.”
During an interview with Variety’s podcast, Playback, Chalamet also addresses the #MeToo movement, and why he gave his salary from Woody Allen’s latest film to organizations fighting against sexual harassment.
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