Not winning an Oscar can do funny things to people. Look at Leonardo DiCaprio. He tried harder and harder with every successive loss until he eventually made The Revenant, the movie equivalent of getting punched in the face for likes on TikTok. Same with Lady Gaga, who reacted to losing for A Star Is Born by going so method for House of Gucci that she essentially lived as a Dolmio puppet for nine months.
And so we come to Timothée Chalamet. Now, on paper Chalamet doesn’t need to worry about winning an Oscar, because he played the lead in two films that were nominated for best picture. That’s a huge achievement, especially when you consider that those films – Dune: Part Two and A Complete Unknown – each appealed to wildly different audiences. Before that he made Wonka, which proved his chops in another field. Chalamet appeals to kids, sci-fi fans and people’s dads. He just needs to be announced as lead in a Bridget Jones reboot and he’ll have all four quadrants locked up forever. My point is that Chalamet doesn’t need an Oscar. He has already transcended awards.
However, Chalamet was up for the best actor Oscar this year and lost to Adrien Brody. And judging by the effort he’s put into his new film Marty Supreme, there’s a chance that he’s learned the wrong lesson from the loss. You’ll remember that much was made of Chalamet’s preparation for A Complete Unknown, which involved five years of singing lessons, guitar lessons and general Bob Dylan studies. Indeed, by the end of this preparation, Chalamet couldn’t have been any more like Dylan if he’d toured the world honking atonally to the bafflement of fans. And this got him nominated for an Oscar. So now it’s lodged in his head: preparation equals glory.
Marty Supreme is also a film based on a real person. It’s being released at Christmas, a sure sign that it’s expected to do well at the Oscars. And so now word is starting to leak out that Chalamet threw everything he had into preparing for the role. That role, by the way, is a professional ping pong player.
Speaking to Variety, the film’s cinematographer Darius Khondji revealed that Chalamet spent “months and months” learning ping pong because “he wanted to be like a real (professional) ping pong player when he started shooting”. Khondji explained that the preparation was necessary because “you can do anything, any camera tricks you want, but you need to have a core”.
In truth, few films this year sound as exciting as Marty Supreme. It’s directed by Josh Safdie and, aside from Chalamet and his co-star Gwyneth Paltrow, it is stuffed with hundreds of non-actors ranging from world class ping pong players to Philippe Petit and Abel Ferrara. Everything about it suggests that it’s going to be something special. Indeed, with a pedigree like this it might result in Chalamet finally winning best actor at the Oscars next year.
But this might not be the right lesson to learn. Spending months and months disappearing into role after role doesn’t sound very healthy and, what’s more, it doesn’t always win awards. Again, look at this year’s Oscars. The supporting actor award was basically a two-horse race between Jeremy Strong (who speaks lovingly about his craft, and the intellectual and physical challenges of becoming another person for a living) and Kieran Culkin (who basically played himself in A Real Pain and then spent the promotional campaign making lots of different fart noises with his mouth). You don’t need to be told that Strong went home empty-handed that night.
So it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to do the work, especially if Marty Supreme ends up being as good as it’s shaping up to be, but it isn’t always wise to explain to the world how much effort the roles took. Timothée Chalamet, you are a movie star. Take a couple of easy jobs and coast on your charisma for a bit. You might win an award, you might not. But at least you’ll have several months of your life back to spend riding Lime bikes around London, or whatever it is you do with your time.
