Do we still make movie stars? It’s a question film critics have been asking lately—usually answering: ‘not really.’ It’s a question into which a lot is packed, such as: what’s one’s definition of a ‘movie star’ in the first place, and upon what is it based (e.g., box-office numbers or award nominations; longevity or consistency in their overall catalogue; critical reception or international fandom)?; and, to what extent are movie stars ‘made’ (e.g., by the external marketing strategies of studios), compared to ‘discovered’ and ‘developed’ (e.g., by honing their craft through different projects with formative directors)? It is also a question from which many alternative, and not necessarily competing, conclusions can be reasonably drawn, such as: that Hollywood’s attraction (addiction?) to pre-existing IP has led to actors being swallowed up by the larger characters and roles they inhabit (best illustrated by the so-called ‘Marvelization’ of movies, where people go to Spiderman or Thor movies not to see Maguire/Garfield/Holland or Hemsworth, but for the overarching character they already know and love)[1]; that with the rise of ‘prestige-television’ actors have migrated from the large to the small screen, dispersing talent and handicapping the emergence of a new crop of movie stars; or that streaming services have all but eliminated DVD/Blu-ray sales, and are in the process of killing movie theaters, and have thus mortally wounded the ‘movie star,’ draining projects of the financial capital necessary to make the smaller scale dramas and comedies once necessary for building such a career[2]; and finally of course, the effect of ‘social media’, which can apparently be blamed for anything and everything, without any further comment necessary. These are all interesting questions (and answers), to which I have nothing new at all to add here.

Maybe there is a dearth of new movie stars… A recent poll by the National Research Group asked moviegoers which actors they’d be most interested in seeing on the big screen. Note the question was not, ‘who do you think is the most talented actor?’ or even ‘who is your favourite,’ but, with an eye at the bottom-line, basically: ‘which actor are you most likely to buy a ticket to watch?’ Of the top 100 actors named, only 13 are under 40 years old. When it comes to the top 20, not a single actor is under 40 and the average age is 58 years old, with the octogenarians Morgan Freeman (86) and Harrison Ford (81) being the most senior stars (the latter of whom was digitally de-aged this year so that we could all watch him fight a castle full of Nazi’s in his last(?) Indiana Jones movie).

And at the very top of this list is, of course, Tom Cruise, Hollywood’s most bankable star: reliably putting cheeks in seats; boasting a critically acclaimed catalogue, though not without its ugly ducklings—see Knight and Day (but don’t actually see it, if you haven’t yet had the misfortune); and having worked with seemingly all the top directors an actor could dream for, from Francis Ford Coppola to Steven Spielberg (twice), and from Paul Thomas Anderson to Stanley Kubrick—and let’s also throw in Ron Howard and Michael Mann for good measure! Tom Cruise is the undeniable movie star par excellence, but is he the last of a dying breed? Perhaps not… Enter stage left, Timothée Chalamet.     

Timothée got his first serious recurring role in 2012 on Season 2 of Homeland, playing the Vice-President’s spoilt son and a bratty boyfriend, and where he killed a woman in his car, before eventually being killed himself in an explosion at his own father’s memorial—oh, Homeland…  Timothée’s first big break came with his role in Chris Nolan’s 2014 Interstellar, where this time he played Mathew McConaughey’s sulky-son and a (somewhat) bratty brother; although the role was not as big as Timothée had thought it would be, and he has since shared that after excitedly driving to the theaters with his dad to watch the movie, in which he just has a few brief scenes (amounting to less than 9mins), he cried all the way home in the passenger seat.

His break-out role came in 2017, with Call Me By Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino. With the impressively precocious, impossibly precious, and incessantly perturbed character of Elio, for which he received an Oscar nomination, Timothée had outgrown his ‘bratty’ phase. Since then, he’s been in movies such as Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), Villeneuve’s Dune Part I and Part II (2021 and 2024), and joined Guadagnino once again for Bones and All (2022)—and let’s throw in Wes Anderson’s (The French Dispatch, 2021) and Paul King’s (Wonka, 2023) for good measure! With this impressive catalogue to show for the first decade of his career in cinema (keep in mind, he’s just turned 28 years old), it is little wonder that Chalamet has emerged as Hollywood’s current it-guy, and potential heir apparent to the Cruise movie star crown.

But if plenty have touted Timmy as Hollywood’s reigning leading man, the laudatory analysis of what makes him so good at his craft has seemed at times, to me, a bit meager. And so in this essay, I attempt to pin down precisely what makes Chalamet so compelling and successful, namely: his vulnerability in choosing roles; his physicality in embodying those roles on screen; his canny decision-making in navigating the industry; and his relationship building with auteur directors. These are the four pillars that give me faith in believing that Timothée is our Tom, and the next big movie star in over a generation, our new TC. In fact, I think Chalamet could perhaps be even more special of an actor than Cruise. And after giving my reasons as to why, I end by highlighting my highest hope for his future: the budding and flowering of a special relationship with Villeneuve (much like DiCaprio has enjoyed with Scorsese). Forget Kylie Jenner—Villeneuve and Chalamet are the pair I’m shipping.

Physicality on Screen

I want to start with the most important, and perhaps surprising, aspect of Timothée’s acting: his physicality on screen. This may be an unexpected place to start because most might not think of Timothée as a physically imposing figure; indeed, the most striking thing about his physical appearance may be how slight he is, almost even frail. (I only barely exaggerate if I say he resembles Christian Bale, but halfway through the Machinist!)  Granted, he may not be physically imposing, but he is physically compelling. Physicality, after all, is so much more than just size, and the ways in which Timothée presents his body—all aspects of it: his posture, his face, his eyes—only serve to impose upon viewers the power of his physical presence. If I had to give a definition of ‘physicality’ for an actor, it would be something along the lines of: when I watch them act, they make me notice and think about their body—I want to look at their face, I want to look into their eyes. And so the first aspect of Timothée’s physicality is that he has an interesting face, and endlessly expressive eyes. (See this interview 2:30-3:40 where Nolan says the reason he chose Murphy for Oppenheimer was for his compelling eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ccGXAI8AvY )

Note that I say interesting, and not necessarily beautiful. Let me get this out of the way: yes, I think Timothée is of course beautiful. But I don’t actually think he is that beautiful, and I think that’s a good thing. I think an undeniable aspect of his beauty and appeal follows from his interesting persona: he has reintroduced a certain androgynous flair into stifling norms of male beauty.[3] He’s an exciting new Hollywood heartthrob and current dream-guy partly because of the welcome ways he transgresses the norms of that category.  And so of course Timothée is a handsome man, but I think it is important that he is not a striking, traditional beauty, at least not in the undeniable way. There is an element of enigmatic strangeness to his face, that is crucial, I think, for the very best actors. He is not necessarily ‘weird-hot,’ like Adrien Brody, Benedict Cumberbatch, or Tilda Swinton, but neither is he a Brad Pitt or Henry Cavill. And this is key to Chalamet’s success as an actor—he can’t be too beautiful.

As a quick support for this claim, cast your eye over the lists of People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive winners, and compare this to the list of Best Actor winners, and notice the surprising lack of overlap. On one side, we have actors such as Chris Evans and Hemsworth, Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, Pitt, Clooney, Brosnan, Depp. None of these actors have an Oscar for best actor (Pitt and Clooney each have a best supporting award). On the other side, we have actors such as Anthony Hopkins, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Daniel Day Lewis, Phillip Seymour Hoffman—men not with beautiful faces, but certainly interesting faces. When there is some overlap between the lists, with actors such as Mathew McConaughey and Denzel Washington, notice that those are roles where they have to find some way of obscuring or counteracting their beauty. When we watch actors  in actually interesting roles, we have to be able to get past the beauty of their faces, and we have to find something else compelling in their bodies, besides raw sex appeal.[4] Or consider this: Mahershala Ali and Michal B Jordan are both excellent actors and beautiful men; but the former’s very face (his eyes, his mouth, etc.) has something that the latter’s will never have, and it is not beauty. It is almost like a kind of physical pathos etched into his very physiognomy, and it makes Ali the more compelling actor to watch in the more interesting range of roles. Timothée Chalamet has this ‘something else’.

Chalamet’s face is simply interesting to look at, precisely because it is possible to get past the beauty of it: his face is not symmetrical, his teeth are a bit fucked up (and I hope he has the confidence to keep them that way), and there’s an overall gaunt, scrunched, and pointy quality to his face. But these are the aspects of his countenance that make his face so emotive, and so compelling to watch (although nowhere as compelling to watch as Barry Keoghan’s face!). Think of how Edgar Allan Poe claimed ‘there is no beauty without some strangeness’: the ‘imperfections’ of Timothée’s face–on a countenance otherwise so near ‘perfection’–seem to draw us in all the more, to its nooks and crannies in all their asymmetry; because of this, in simply watching his face, we become active participants, rather than just passive admirers.

The face is where the most intense, emotionally impactful moments of the story have to be told, whether they be through micro-expressions or dramatic outpourings. Think of that famous three minute closing scene from Call Me By Your Name, where Chalamet just stares into the fire, and we just stare back. His interesting face tells us everything he’s thinking and feeling (surely this one brilliant scene alone, which only lasts 3 minutes, played an outsized role in his deserved Oscar nomination).[5] Or try this: watch the gom jabbar scene from Dune without any sound.[6] Notice that without any words, nor the guidance of the score, Timothée’s face still captures and communicates all the beats of that scene: the fear, the pain, the triumphant defiance. And it is all as subtle as it is undeniable; none of it is over-the-top. Timothée’s face is simply fun to read and interpret.

When we think of acting and physicality, we might think of especially dramatic scenes: Daniel Day Lewis in the final scene of There Will Be Blood (or the baptism scene); Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in the argument scene from a Marriage story; Cruise and Nicholson in their courtroom yelling match from A Few Good Men; Al Pacino’s speech at the end of Scent of a Woman. But an actor’s physicality must also expand to the simple subtlety of the expressiveness held by their eyes, or what the crook of their neck tells us. I’m constantly thinking not only of Timothée’s body while watching him, but he makes me think about my body. I find myself wondering (hoping!) whether my eyebrows ever look like that when I’m thinking, or can I even squint like that, or if that’s how it looks when I’m slouched over… Brad Pitt’s best subtle act of physicality is eating: for whatever reason, it just compelling to watch him masticate, and this quirk has by now reached absurd (but enjoyable) levels of self-aware self-caricature.[7] Similarly, Tom Cruise looks good running; and again he knows it, and seems to ensure that he has at least a couple shots of him running in every movie.[8] But Timothée needs no such gimmicks: his body and face are simply ceaselessly compelling as they are.  

Indeed, Timothée’s very physical frailty only often serves to amplify his physicality on screen. For instance, in The King, the camera takes time to capture and establish just how slender and slight he is. But then scenes later, he is on the battlefield, engaged in single hand-to-hand combat—and you believe it too! Right before your eyes what you once took for his frail fragility now transforms into a lithe lethality, and you believe it when you watch him killing another man.

Or in Bones and All, where he is again a killer, at first his small size seems to make it inconceivable. But Chalamet convinces you there’s a hidden reptilian strength coiled into his wiry frame, and you wouldn’t want to come across him in a dark alley. And in the final fight scene of Dune Part I, you can understand why Jamis would underestimate this wisp of a boy, but you can also believe how this slender body could be deadly. Chalamet actually has a more compelling tension to his physicality in all of these scenes than does, say, Matt Damon when beating up bad guys as Jason Bourne.

Physicality is so important because, of course, in watching actors we are ultimately observing bodies, as they attempt to capture and communicate emotional cues through actions, both big and small. Chalamet’s face and body are especially well suited to this endeavour. And luckily, Chalamet pairs his adroit acting with exceptional choice in roles, which is defined most of all by his vulnerable willingness to take on untraditional protagonists, even playing unapologetically unsympathetic characters.

Vulnerability of Roles

When it comes to Chalamet’s characters, he is almost never the cool guy. He might attempt to perform coolness, as he does as Kyle in Lady Bird, where describes people as “hella tight,” smokes cigarettes, is in a band with a French name (L’ Enfance Nue), and reads Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” in coffee shops (while smoking). In other words, Timothée is the kind of posing, pretentious young man earnest teenage girls will often make the mistake of falling for; he is meant to be attractive to Christine, but laughable to the audience. In Beautiful Boy, he’s a hopelessly lost drug-attic, ruining the lives of his friends and family. In Dune Part I he may seem to be playing the hero’s role of Luke Skywalker, liberator of the galaxy, but he is actually meant to grow into Darth Vader, and become an interplanetary genocidal leader (something Villeneuve is intent on hammering home). In none of these movies is Timothée the ethical poll, or the character we ultimately affirm, admire, or identify with.

And even when he is a sympathetic protagonist, such as with Elio in Call Me By Your Name, he is not the traditional love interest. He is thoughtful and charming, sure; but also awkward, and at times somewhat pathetic: sniffing another man’s sweaty underwear while he touches himself, or using a peach to masturbate. Compare this to the breakout roles of a DiCaprio or a Cruise. Leo is only presented to be applauded and admired, in a tragic love story where the characters take no risks and push no boundaries. Cruise might dance around in his underpants in Risky Business, but he’s not going to fuck a fruit.

After Titanic, DiCaprio had the chance to play the villain in American Psycho, a role that ultimately went to Christian Bale. Apparently it was partly Gloria Steinem (a famous second-wave feminist) who convinced DiCaprio against signing on: he had just won the hearts of teenage girls around the world with Romeo+Juliet and Titanic—he couldn’t follow it up with a character committing sadistic acts of violence against women… Fair enough. Smart.

But compare this with Chalamet: after winning our hearts as the tender Elio in Call My By Your Name, the next time he teams back up with director Luca Guadagnino it is for the fantastic movie Bones and All, where he plays the character of Lee, a drifter cannibal. This is not the suave, elegant version of a villain that we get with Tom Cruise as a vampire in Interview—this is gritty and gross. In that role we watch him give a man a hand-job in a cornfield, only to slit his throat at the moment of orgasm, and then EAT HIM! After Dune, this is my favourite performance of Timothée’s, and without giving any spoilers, by the end of the movie he and Taylor Russell almost succeed in making cannibalism… romantic?[9]

And so Timothée is willing to take creative and artistic risks in his acting, the kind of risks that truly interesting roles demand. Timothée is willing to push and cross the usual boundaries of gender, sexuality, and violence in his portrayals of different characters. He is not afraid to seem feminine and wear women’s clothing, he’s not afraid to come off as sadistic or repulsive, or as a loser.

Compare this with, say, Tom Cruise, who is almost always ‘the guy’ in his roles, always in control, never the punching bag, seldom the butt of the joke. But the few times Cruise manages to cede some of that persona, he’s ended up with his best movies. (Think of even Edge of Tomorrow, where part of the fun of that movie is watching Cruise be a coward, make mistakes, and get killed over and over!) Chalamet knows how to get out of his own way. In contrast, how long has it taken DiCaprio to allow himself to play an actually despicable character? Basically until this past year, in Killers of the Flower Moon (Wolf of Wall Street and Django Unchained, both played primarily in a comedic register, don’t count). And has Cruise ever actually tried? Dwayne the Rock Johnson, who now so compulsively manages his acting persona that it is much more like a brand, once allowed himself to take a vulnerable risk, in what turned out to be his best role, in Pain and Gain. But now he won’t even allow himself to kiss a co-star—how far he has fallen from snorting cocaine off strippers! Or consider Jake Gyllenhall, who is a great example of an actor who has his best performance whenever he is willing to embrace his weirdness and drop the cool guy act (e.g., Brokeback Mountain, Nightcrawler, or even Ambulance).

Also, and as Dane McDonald points out on his podcast “Chasing Chalamet,” Timothée often proves himself willing to the play supporting cast-member to less famous female leads. In his roles, he doesn’t have to steal the scene, and he’s happy to just appear, play his part, and serve the story. Unlike Cruise, he doesn’t have to be the coolest guy in the movie, and unlike DiCaprio, he’s happy to just play his part (even if small), without being the star of every scene. I think these are essential instincts that will serve him well during his career. It shows he is here, first and foremost, to make good movies.  

Canny Decision-making

Timothée has also displayed a discerning canniness not only in the way he chooses roles, but also by the ones he avoids, or distances himself from. The first time they ever met, DiCaprio reportedly threw his arm around Chalamet and offered this sage advice: “no hard drugs and no superhero movies.” Whether this is because superhero roles risk being artistically insubstantial, or getting an actor typecast, I leave aside (but think Tom Holland following up his Spidermans with the forgettable action movie Uncharted). And although he’s been entertaining, one wonders what more interesting roles Benedict Cumberbatch has had to pass up in order to take part in the Marvel Universe. Chalamet, on the other hand, has presumably left Marvel money on the table in order to pursue those more serious roles.

Chalamet’s first movie as the lead-star came with Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York. On this film, Chalamet actually literally left money on the table! As the film’s (intended) release coincided with the Me Too movement, Chalamet subsequently distanced himself from the problematic director, refusing to promote the film, and donating all of his earnings from the movie to charity. These are the kind of prudent, behind the scene moves that are the markers of true, lasting movie stars. (Think of Cruise waiting until he had a good story to make another Top Gun movie, instead of cashing in long ago; or knowing not to touch the character of Zorro, and let it go to a Latino actor; or postponing Mission Impossible II so that he could work with Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut.) Besides being the ethical move, this was an all the more prudent and canny decision, as this movie is atrocious, and Timothée has succeeded in essentially burying his worst role.

Part of the problem is with Allen’s derivative, boring, and out of touch script, where he has Timothée (as a young college student) saying ridiculous lines, such as: “The worst is when I’m sexually conflicted, then ill hiccup indefinitely,” or “I’m not seeing a shrink, I was just taking a walk and he asked me to help out.” But another part of the problem with the movie is that, simply put, Timothée Chalamet is not a comedic actor. I don’t think he has any comedic timing. I’ve watched almost all of his movies, and he has never made me truly laugh—not once.[10] This, by the way, is why Wonka doesn’t really work: Chalamet doesn’t seem to have the kind of comedic charisma necessary for that character. He said quickly the lines he should’ve said slow, and said slowly the lines he should have quipped. Timothée never lets himself be zany, and Willy needs to be a little cuckoo; instead Timothée’s voice and persona feels flat the whole time. In the entire movie, there is only one quick scene where he falls into the weird energy Wonka needs much, much more of (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19bhnCBezs4). (That Timothée does not have comedic sensibilities, and cannot seem to make me laugh, is not necessarily a bad thing. I’d say much the same of an actor such as Daniel Day Lewis, whom I otherwise laud. DDL does his best work playing mad monomaniacs; Timothée does his best, I think, in the register of a somber, self-serious, outsider/loner type of character. When I see him in Wonka or Little Women, laughing, happy, and enjoying an untroubled sense of belonging, I think to myself, “No Timmy, this is simply not you, it doesn’t work!” And so if I may offer one warning to Timothée, it would the Delphic admonishment to Know Thyself…) [Update: After just having watched Marty Supreme, I rescind the comment that Timothèe has never made me laugh–that was the hardest I laughed in theaters all 2025.]

Now, it may seem that Timothée has disregarded Leonardo’s advice about no superhero films, by taking up the Dune movies. But Dune is different. First, as mentioned above, it’s not a simple superhero story of good vs evil. Second, and most important, it’s Denis Villeneuve—one of the best-living directors (all of his films range from good to great to fantastic). Dune Part I is already a work of art, it’s not a Thor movie; not even Black Panther quite shares its level of masterpiece and world building. Furthermore, Dune is Denis’s “dream movie” that he has wanted to make since he was a teenager, and he wrote the role of Paul Atreides specifically with only Timothée Chalamet in mind to play the part.

Villeneuve intimately understands the epic nature of the human face, and Timothée’s face is the perfect canvas–the lingering closeups alone are themselves worth the price of the ticket. And so if Denis comes asking for you, you come. In taking the chance to work on these movies with Denis Villeneuve, Chalamet’s career has reached another echelon.  He’s working with one of the best directors, on their dream movie, and with a fantastic cast and crew. For instance, Dune also happens to be Hans Zimmer “dream movie”, so much so that he never watched previous versions (because he wanted to be able to approach it ‘virginally’) and he reportedly spent 2 weeks alone in the Nevada desert to learn how to incorporate the natural sounds and sense of the desert into his score. For the first time in a quite a while, I’m actually very excited to go see a movie in the theater!

Relationship building w/ Auteur Directors

And this leads me to the final pillar of Chalamet’s success: the way he has built relationships with auteur directors, such as Greta Gerwig, Luca Guadagnino, and Denis Villeneuve. Whenever you see actors and directors continuing to work together like this, you know there is a deep mutual respect there, and these kind of relationships have very often lead to fantastic art. (Think Scorsese and Deniro/DiCaprio; Tarantino and Jackson; Sofia Coppola and Kirsten Dunst; Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis; Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan; Jordan Peel and Daniel Kaluuya; Spielberg and Hanks.)

It is my hope that Chalamet ‘pairs up’ with such a director going forward, and creates one of these special relationships. It could end up being Guadagnino, with whom not only has he already made two excellent films, but he even joined on as a producer of Bones and All (which I think bodes well as offering a kind of indication of the sort of interesting movies Timothée might be most motivated in being involved with going forward). But my personal hope is for a special relationship between Chalamet and Villeneuve going forward.

Villeneuve’s and Chalamet’s approaches to cinema seem to share a fundamental affinity that suggests to me they could bring out the best aspects of each other’s craft. Villeneuve is poignant and moving. (The fact that he doesn’t have much humour in his movies aligns well with that one fault in Chalamet’s acting.) Villeneuve is willing to take risks, and does some of his best work when exploring messed up, violent story lines. They’re both French speaking, and I think it would be interesting for them to make a fully bilingual film. (Notice the ways Timothée seems to almost always bring French into his films, even if just for a sentence or a few words, such as in Lady Bird, Beautiful Boy, and Hostiles, or more substantially, with Call Me By Your Name and The King).

Finally, Villeneuve seems to be an especially collaborative and accommodating director, and a natural mentor.[11] Villeneuve is the kind of director who can reach into actors and bring something special out. Villeneuve’s filmography is one obsessed with plumbing the dark depths of the human condition; he creates somber atmospheres, hostile worlds, punctuated by violence, as well as beauty. I would love to see Denis taking Timothée under his wing, and Timmy becoming his muse to explore dark, strange roles (think Ryan Gosling and Nicolas Winding Refn in Drive and Only God Forgives).

If we’re comparing Chalamet to DiCaprio, the former still really needs his “Aviator” moment: a film that is almost solely a vehicle for him to take center stage and truly showcase his talent. Coincidently enough, this may be soon arriving for Chalemet, also in the form of a biopic, where Timothée will be Bob Dylan, in a movie currently in pre-production but titled A Complete Unknown, written and directed by James Mangold (who also did Walk the Line).

These are the things that Timothée both brings to the screen and does behind the scenes, which I think combine to make him unique amongst his peers. He allows himself to be repulsive or a awkward, in ways Clooney, Pitt, or DiCaprio seldom do. He disappears, equally believably, into the roles of heart throb or loser, in ways only matched perhaps by Gosling or Pattinson. And he makes canny decisions in how he navigates the industry, much like Cruise, while building relationships of mutual respect with the best directors. And so all of this is why I herald Timothée as the new TC!  If you’re wondering where I’ll be on March 1, you can find me in a dark, sure to be packed, theater, staring into the engrossing and enigmatic eyes of this electric young actor.  

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[1] The case of Robert Downing Jr.as Iron Man is perhaps the shining (and sole?) counter-example, where many fans were conceivably returning to the theater mainly for the man behind the mask. Indeed, Christopher Nolan has said that casting RDJ as Iron Man was the most decisive casting choice of the twenty-first century, given how his success in that role helped usher in the other Marvel movies, and the effect that’s had on cinema. Following Nolan’s logic, this would suggest that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the most important movie of the twenty-first century, since it revitalized RBJ’s career, and made him a candidate for Iron Man in the first place. And I’m more than OK with this conclusion—KKBB is my favourite Christmas movie, after all.

[2] See this clip, where Matt Damon nicely explains how the disappearance of DVD sales has changed the logic of what kind of movies get made today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx8F5Imd8A8

[3] But I think that another undeniable part of his appeal is, as with many stars, simply how the medium of fame and success makes people more beautiful. Suddenly, the guy you only kind of noticed in the high school hallways now seems impossibly beautiful when appearing airbrushed on billboards for Chanel perfume. I ask you, would Timothée still look good without his hair, like Brad Pitt pulls off in Fight Club?

[4] I mean, let’s not dig too deep into this dichotomy I’m constructing. I’m not saying that the beautiful actors are not winning Oscars because they’re too beautiful, or vice versa that less beautiful actors make better actors because they’re not as beautiful. But at the same time, you can see what I’m saying: there’s something about acting at the very highest levels where beauty begins to count against you. Such that, if you’re a traditionally handsome man, you better get deathly obese (like Brendan Fraser in the Whale) or deathly skinny (like McConaughey in Dallas Buyer’s Club).

[5] What other actors could pull of this scene without it starting to seem overly indulgent or sentimental or even laughable?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0jzxPAuo6c

[6] Dune’s gom jabbar scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9fvEDpub8M . Villeneuve has said that this was one of his most cherished scenes from the book, and that it was one of the first scenes they filmed on set, and his first time working with Chalamet. Villeneuve said that Chalamet’s performance for this scene had him dancing with glee behind the camera; he was just stunned, and he knew he had made the correct casting decision.

[7] Brad Pitt eating in movies: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/why-is-brad-pitt-always-eating-in movies/#:~:text=Brad%20Pitt%20actually%20commented%20on,next%20meal%20might%20come%20from

[8] Indeed, Tom’s Twitter bio reads “Actor. Producer. Running in Movies since 1981.” And a youtube video that stitches together all the different scenes of him running is almost 20minutes long, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Q2MgdMskQ

[9] Quite the accomplishment, considering the repulsive taboo that is cannibalism. For instance, when I informed my wife that the one piece of artwork that I would like to hang in our home was Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son,” I was not only told “NO!”, but also told (not asked) “what the fuck is wrong with you!” Again: fair enough. But marriage is about compromise, and so the painting now hangs at the back of our closet, and Kronos’s nakedness hides behind our hanging clothes.

[10] The actor who Timothée most reminds me of is Ryan Gosling, who is actually my favourite movie star. They can both play the heartthrob, but they’re also willing to get weird, and violent; or to disappear (and believable so) into the role of a pathetic loser (which Gosling does in Lars and he Real Girl). But the biggest difference is that Gosling can make you laugh, and has impeccable comedic timing. Take just this 10 second clip from his funniest movie, The Nice Guys, where just how Gosling turns his head and the expression on his face will make you laugh every time… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUQJBCzEyio  (I don’t think Chalamet can do that, at least I have not seen it yet.) But Gosling also made the movie The Gray Man, and as a Gosling fan, that really, really hurt me. Shame on you, Ryan!

[11] Look at this interview where Buatista (who has worked with Villeneuve as much as any actor besides Josh Brolin) says how Denis is the first actor to give him the kind of encouraging acknowledgement that has enabled him to truly begin to trust his instincts and allow him to bring his craft to new levels (see 1min 45 second mark). Bautista says he would work for Villeneuve for free if it was in the lead role—that’s Wes Anderson levels of devotion that Denis inspires! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43rNti0r_iM