Timothée Chalamet is completely electric.
The 28-year-old actor will be the man of the hour at Sunday’s Golden Globes, as two of his films — “Dune Part Two” and “A Complete Unknown” — are up against each other in the Best Drama category, while Chalamet himself is nominated for best actor in a drama, for the latter
It’s his show-stopping portrayal of music icon Bob Dylan, Hollywood insiders say, that has propelled the actor to serious leading-man status and positioned him as a grown-up in a way that his previously nominated roles, including “Call Me By Your Name” and “Wonka,” didn’t quite.
In “A Complete Unknown,” Chalamet sings over 40 songs including “Girl From North Country,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and “The Times They are A Changin,” and plays the guitar and harmonica — earning praise from Dylan himself, who raved on X in December, “Timmy’s a brilliant actor.”
“He carries that ‘stubborn artist’ to a genius [level],” Danny Rosner, producer of the upcoming film “The Hotel Martinez,” told The Post of Chalamet. “It’s a dream role especially because he can sing. They didn’t have to do much but let him perform … the role allowed him to go quite far out, showing the full range. The acting is unquestionably solid. I hope he wins.”
Off screen, the zillennial already won the promotion game this awards season.
He flexed football knowledge on ESPN, schooled podcaster Theo Von on affordable middle-class housing in New York City (Chalamet grew up in Manhattan Plaza, a subsidized Mitchell-Lama building for artists), and dropped in on a Minnesota marching band rehearsal as part of his unconventional press tour for “A Complete Unknown.”
When his floppy hair and “sexy rat” looks inspired thousands of doppelgangers to show up in Washington Square Park for a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in October, the good-natured actor dropped by to check it out.
“He was already a young movie star with a great career, but this pushes him up a couple notches. He could get nominated for an Academy Award and he could easily win,” a former studio executive told The Post of the current buzz. “If I was an agent, I’d want to be representing him right now.”
The year of Timmy has been capped off by him casually dating Kardashian-adjacent reality star and cosmetics entrepreneur Kylie Jenner. The two have been linked since April 2023, but a Jenner source told The Post that they are “happy to just be in the moment, have a good time, and not stress about what the future holds.
“They’re good for each other because they both have tendencies to get a little brooding and in their own heads about things, and they lighten each other up,” the source added.
“Brooding” is the right tone for playing Dylan, and Chalamet spent five years working with a vocal and dialect coach to perfect the folk-rock singer’s nasally rasp.
Larry “Ratso” Sloman, who wrote the biography “On the Road with Bob Dylan” and also stars opposite Chalamet in the the upcoming movie “Marty Supreme,” was impressed by the actor.
“Timmy’s a very down-to-Earth guy. In one scene, I’m having him kicked out of my room. We were fighting and he was so into the scene that he accidentally spit on me. After we cut, he came over and apologized,” Sloman, who is working on the upcoming podcast “The Lost Leonard Cohen Tapes,” told The Post.
“He’s so focused. He just wants to get the scene right. He spent five years getting ready for the Dylan role. He went to Bob’s old house [in Minnesota] where he grew up. [Dylan] is a shape shifter — he takes on different identities, he’s always changing,” Sloman said. “I thought Timmy did an amazing job of capturing that essence. I was very awestruck by that. The other thing about him is, he’s a huge Dylan fan. There’s some actors who play a role and forget about it. He’s still a tremendous fan of Bob’s.”
As a teen, Chalamet, who dated Madonna’s daughter Lourdes Leon while attending LaGuardia High School in Manhattan, failed to land roles in action movies “Maze Runner” and “Divergent.”
“I would always get the same feedback. ‘Oh, you don’t have the right body.’ I had an agent call me once and say, ‘I’m tired of getting the same feedback. We’re gonna stop submitting you for these bigger projects, because you’re not putting on weight,’” Chalamet told Rolling Stone.
Instead, he turned to indie films, playing a womanizing boyfriend in “Lady Bird,” a recovering meth addict in “Beautiful Boy,” Laurie in “Little Women” and a sexually awakened 17-year-old in “Call Me By Your Name,” which earned him an Oscar nomination.
“I was knocking on one door that wouldn’t open,” he told Rolling Stone. “So I went to what I thought was a more humble door, but actually ended up being explosive for me.”
Despite his girlfriend’s high profile, Chalamet and Jenner have managed to keep their relationship largely out of the public eye, like when they slipped the West Village pizza restaurant Little Charli in October.
“We recognized him solely from his eyes. It was very low key, they were both dressed down — she had on jeans and a white T-shirt, and he was wearing a blue hoodie … No security, no entourage, just the two of them,” a rep for the restaurant told The Post.
“They were trying to be incognito and keep a low profile, like two giddy high-schoolers on a secret date. They were super cute, giggling and whispering to each other. It was adorable. They were very lovey-dovey, like a couple that’s been together a while,” the rep said.
The Jenner source said Chalamet is exactly what the 27-year-old mom-of-two needs right now.
“She was 20 going on 40 for a long long time. So now she’s happy to sort of make up for all the years when her peers were out sewing their wild oats while she was being a mama and a CEO and practically a wife [to rapper Travis Scott], and just have a relationship that’s fun and minimal drama, low stakes,” he source said. “Timothée isn’t looking to get married or seriously settle down any time soon, and Kylie absolutely doesn’t want anything that serious either.
It’s unclear if Jenner will be at this year’s Golden Globes, though she was by Chalamet’s side in the audience when he was nominated last year for “Wonka.”
“They looked happy,” an insider said. “They were still shy, kind of. It was low key.”
When asked if he writes his award show acceptance speeches ahead of time, on SirusXM’s “The Morning Mashup” last month, Chalamet said, “There’s nothing more uniquely hilarious, and something you cannot share with anyone, [than] when you get home and you tear up the little thing [speech] that you never had to use and you think to yourself, ‘You narcissistic, arrogant prick. On what planet did you think you were gonna use this?’”
But Chalamet was very excited for the guy who won that lookalike contest in the fall.
“He immediately asked, ‘What place did you get?’ I said, ‘First.’ His face lit up. He said, ‘No way, we need to take a picture,’” said Miles Mitchell, 21, who won the $50 prize dressed as Chalamet’s Willy Wonka characer. “That goes to show he is a really cool guy.”
