Yahoo Lifestyle Timothée Chalamet recalls being told to 'put on weight' to help book roles early in career
The actor says he didn't get roles in "Maze Runner" and "Divergent" because he didn't have "the right body."
Timothée Chalamet has no problem winning roles these days.
But on Monday's edition of The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music 1, the Wonka actor revealed that there was a time, early in his career, when he did — because of his body type.
"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," Chalamet said. "I had an agent that called me and said, 'You got to put on weight,' basically, not aggressively, but you know."
Chalamet said those experiences gave him something in common with Bob Dylan, whose life is the subject of his next film, A Complete Unknown.
"I've had a life experience, I won't say it's weird, but I can relate to some of these things he went through," the Oscar-nominated actor said in the video, above, starting at 10:42. "Bob wanted to be a rock & roll star — Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Elvis Presley — that was the sort of, depending on your point of view, the sort of rice crispy pop, rock & roll music that was saturated, you know, marketed to kids in the late '50s. Equally, I wanted to be a big movie actor."
Related: Watch Timothée Chalamet crash a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest in NYC
Just as Dylan ultimately became a success, so has Chalamet. He credits taking a different path.
"I found my way into these very personalized movies," Chalamet said. "For him, it was folk music. He couldn't keep a rock & roll band because they would all get hired by other kids that had more money, literally, in Minnesota. So for me, it was finding a very personal style movie — Call Me By Your Name or Beautiful Boy or Lady Bird or Little Women, Miss Stevens, Hot Summer Nights. Those were smaller budget but very... I don't know how else to put it.... personable movies that started in this theatre space. This is where I found my rhythm, my confidence, my flow, whatever you want to call it."
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The highly anticipated A Complete Unknown opens in theaters Dec. 25, traditionally where studios position Oscar bait. The cast also includes Elle Fanning, Edward Norton, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, and Scoot McNairy and is directed by James Mangold, who also directed the hit 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.
