Timotheé Chalamet Really Put In The Work To Portray Bob Dylan
Timotheé Chalamet took playing Bob Dylan in the upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown very seriously.
The actor sat down with Zane Lowe recently and details what all he did to portray the legendary singer-songwriter. Not only did he work with a dialect coach, but he worked with a movement coach. He said he also worked with a harmonica coach for five years. Chalamet even spent time in Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing in Minnesota.
For A Complete Unknown, Chalamet said he had to learn 13 songs, but said he could “probably play 30.” As far as what it was like to perform live on the film’s set, Chalamet said, “It was the most unique challenge I’ve taken on, but where my confidence came through is eventually doing all the music live.”
It seems as though all of his work paid off. Just take a listen to Chalamet perform the classic “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
That work could, in fact, lead to an Oscar nomination, at the very least. As previously reported, A Complete Unknown will hit theaters on December 25, which has often been the date films hoping to win big during Awards Season have dropped in the past.
Per Searchlight Pictures, “Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, ‘A Complete Unknown’ follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.”
The film also stars Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo. (Rolling Stone notes that director James Mangold confirmed that Fanning’s character “is simply a renamed version of Dylan’s real-life girlfriend of that era, Suze Rotolo.”)
A Brief History of A Complete Unknown
This Bob Dylan biopic has long been in the works. News of Chalamet cast as Dylan dates back to January 2020. At the time, the biopic was titled Going Electric.
In October 2020, the Dylan biopic was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael told Collider then, “I don’t think it’s dead, but it’s a tough one to pull off in a COVID-era because it’s all in small clubs with lots of extras in period costumes, so you’ve got lots of hair and makeup.”
In April 2023, director James Mangold confirmed Chalamet would be singing in the film and not lipsync to any Dylan recordings. Mangold further noted the film, which is based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric, will chronicle Dylan coming to New York in his late teens to pursue music.
