In less than a decade of playing leading roles in movies, Timothée Chalamet has become one of the biggest names in Hollywood. His movie-star looks and charisma make a major difference, of course, but he wouldn’t have experienced such a meteoric rise without the serious talent to back it up. He’s already worked with some of the most accomplished filmmakers of the past decade, along with carrying a high-profile blockbuster franchise.
Chalamet can play fierce and powerful just as well as he can play reserved and contemplative. Even in smaller roles, he commands the audience’s attention. He’s just getting started on what’s certain to be a long and varied career, but for now here are five of the best movies with Timothée Chalamet that you can stream right away.
Call Me by Your Name
Chalamet had his breakthrough role in Luca Guadagnino’s languid romantic drama, based on the novel by André Aciman. Set in 1983 in a picturesque town in the north of Italy, the movie stars Chalamet as introverted, sensitive 17-year-old Elio, whose life is changed by the arrival of graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer). Elio’s admiration for the confident, assertive Oliver, who’s been hired to assist Elio’s college professor father (Michael Stuhlbarg), turns to passion as the two of them spend more time together.
Chalamet gives an understated performance that conveys the deep feelings Elio is processing, and he and Hammer bring heat to their scenes together. Call Me by Your Name is sensual and sumptuous, but its most indelible moments are the quietest, culminating in a beautiful, heartbreaking final shot of Chalamet capturing the weight of Elio’s entire experience without saying a word.
Watch on Netflix
Lady Bird
As the alluring, aloof bad boy who is clearly wrong for Saoirse Ronan’s title character, Chalamet adds just the right amount of pretentious douchebaggery to writer-director Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age film. Lady Bird herself is a bit obnoxious, and it’s no surprise that she’s drawn to this leather-clad self-styled intellectual who plays bass in a local band. The movie charts Lady Bird’s often painful journey to maturity and introspection, and part of that journey is learning that guys like Chalamet’s Kyle should always be avoided.
Kyle serves his purpose in the plot, but he isn’t exactly a nuanced character. Still, Chalamet immediately embodies a certain type of teenage faux-outsider recognizable across eras and locations. He knows how to make a memorable impression without ever taking the spotlight away from the actual main character.
Watch on Paramount Plus
Little Women
Chalamet takes on a bigger role in his second collaboration with filmmaker Greta Gerwig, once again co-starring opposite Saoirse Ronan. In Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic 1868 novel, Chalamet plays Laurie, the longtime friend of the March sisters who becomes an object of romantic desire for both Ronan’s Jo and Florence Pugh’s Amy. Laurie can be a bit arrogant, but he’s also intelligent and kind-hearted, and it’s easy to see why two of the equally smart and sensitive March sisters fall for him.
Laurie is just one of the fascinating characters in Gerwig’s version of Little Women, which takes a non-linear approach to Alcott’s story of four sisters growing up in Civil War-era Massachusetts. It’s a fresh approach to an oft-told tale, and Chalamet is an essential part of it.
Watch on Starz
Dune
Chalamet is at the center of Denis Villeneuve’s ambitious adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel, and he helps ground a story that relies on dense, grandiose concepts. In a story set thousands of years in the future, Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, heir to one of the ruling families of a planetary empire. When Paul’s father is granted control of the planet Arrakis, Paul finds himself at the center of a massive battle involving the most powerful people in the galaxy, as well as the natives of Arrakis, called the Fremen.
As various factions vie for control of the precious resource known as spice, Paul emerges as a leader and a potential savior, a role that he embraces only reluctantly. Chalamet portrays that identifiable human struggle within a movie full of heady sci-fi ideas and dazzling special effects.
Watch on Max
Bones and All
Chalamet reunites with filmmaker Luca Guadagnino for a romance that is very different from Call Me by Your Name, but is equally affecting and immersive. He plays Lee, a young drifter who connects with teenage runaway Maren (Taylor Russell) via a primal attraction. They’ve both been born with a strange urge to consume human flesh, and they help each other understand this affliction while traveling across the country and encountering others who are like them.
There are plenty of disturbing horror elements to Bones and All, but Guadagnino gives it the feel of an ethereal romance, with the cannibalism as a metaphor for any sort of outsider status. Chalamet and Russell have a visceral chemistry that mirrors their characters’ insatiable lust, for blood and for each other.
Watch on Prime Video
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