A complete unknown Star Timothée Chalamet was surprised by Bob Dylan with a glowing post on X this week, in which the music legend addressed the acclaimed actor in a variety of ways.

Chalamet plays the early 1960s version of Dylan A complete unknowndirector James Mangold’s highly anticipated upcoming musical drama, which chronicles Dylan’s rise in the New York City folk music scene in the early 1960s to a pivotal period in his career in 1965.

While Chalamet plays guitar and sings his own vocals, A complete unknown contains classic Dylan songs like Blowing in the wind, times are changing And Like a rolling stone.

Dylan heaped praise on Chalamet in Wednesday’s A complete unknown (What a title!). Timothee Chalamet plays the main role. Timmy is a brilliant actor, so I’m sure he’ll be as believable as I am. Or a younger me. Or any other me…”

Chalamet was naturally thrilled by the post, and during a press conference ahead of the film’s premiere in Dylan’s home state of Minnesota in Minneapolis on Thursday night, I asked the Oscar-nominated actor if he was okay with the legendary troubadour calling him “Timmy.” ”

“I really liked that,” enthused Chalamet. “I thought, ‘He beat me with the Timothée and the Timmy’… it was too good to be true.”

Timothée Chalamet says there’s a lot more to “A Complete Unknown” than channeling Bob Dylan

Of course, playing a real character, let alone one who is still alive today, is a challenge for any actor.

Therefore, Timothée Chalamet was faced with the difficult task of not only avoiding the trap of impersonating Bob Dylan A complete unknown but capture the essence of the music icon.

Fortunately, since Chalamet has been working on playing Dylan since 2018, he’s confident that he’s achieved the goal of channeling the singer-songwriter in the film.

“I don’t want to sound too confident, but (I felt like I captured that essence) with every song because I lived with him for so long,” Chalamet told me at the press event. “I feel like I’m at a loss when it comes to answering that question because (I thought), ‘Is this going to feel like Bob to an audience?'” (But) it felt really powerful to me, when I did.”

But that doesn’t mean Chalamet’s long journey to playing Dylan has been easy.

“The lead-up to this was five years of practicing and screwing up,” Chalamet noted.

Not only did Chalamet have to capture the essence of Dylan, but James Mangold presented Chalamet with an equally tough challenge: faithfully recreating the singer-songwriter’s interactions with several important people in his life in the early 1960s.

Among these people in A complete unknown are musicians Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook), as well as Dylan’s former girlfriend Suze Rotolo – whose name was changed to Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) for the film.

“I was more into the history of rock ‘n’ roll and I’m as excited as Bob would have been, but Jim was a lot smarter about, ‘Hey, we’ve got a story to tell here,’ and that’s true. “It wouldn’t be interesting to see a guy in the movie doing covers,” Chalamet told me.

“It was more about, ‘What does this (about Bob) mean in relation to the other characters in the film?’ What would it have been like for Joan Baez, Suze Rotolo or Pete Seeger back then? What was your relationship with Bob? How did Bob relate to them? How did Bob relate to the fact that they were hostile to him?’ and we just humbly breathed life into it,” Chalamet added.

With Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, A complete unknown hits theaters on Christmas Day, December 25th.

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