Timotheé Chalamet is earning raves for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in "A Complete Unknown."
The 29-year-old actor practically channels the music legend as a burgeoning star in the early 1960s, transforming his shaggy locks to resemble Dylan's hairstyle and adopting Dylan's signature nasally speaking and singing style.
Chalamet ultimately sang and performed over 40 songs for the movie.
“It was important for me to sing and play live. Because if I can actually do it, why should there be an element of artifice here? And I’m proud that we took that leap,” Chalamet said in a featurette released ahead of the premiere.
Here's what to know about how Chalamet became Dylan.
Is Timothée Chalamet singing in 'A Complete Unknown'?
Chalamet not only sang all of Dylan's song for the film — he actually performed the songs live on camera, giving James Mangold, the movie's director, and others on the set "chills," Mangold told an audience at the WGA during a post-screening in Beverly Hills this month, according to Variety.
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Chalamet did originally pre-record Dylan's vocals, revealed Mangold, but the actor wanted to take a stab as performing live in character during an early scene depicting Dylan and Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy).
“We shot that in the first five or six days,” Mangold recalled. “And there was a whole backstage thing with Timmy saying, ‘I want to try it live.’”
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Mangold said his suggestion was met with some skepticism. “Some of the sound and music direction people were like, ‘It’s not a good idea,'" Mangold said.
But he opted to allow Chalamet to give it a shot. “And he was phenomenal. Not only that, he proved the brilliance of the method,” said the director.
“There’s this moment where he finishes that song and he holds a note and just keeps hitting the low string on the guitar over and over again, and he’s just his eyes are kind of boring into Woody, and he’s just holding this note, and it gave him chills," Mangold recalled.
“I remember sitting there eight feet from him as he did it, and I remember thinking, ‘Holy s---.’ That could not have happened if there was an earwig in his ear," he added.
Tod Maitland, the movie's sound mixer, told Variety that the biggest musical challenge for Chalamet was varying his vocal stylings to match Dylan's during specific performances.
"Bob’s a mutterer, and Timmy gave his best mutter, so it was pulling that out. He would go from there to that twangy, tough voice that could shrill your eardrums," Maitland said. "But there were, like four different voices inside of Timmy capturing all those and giving them all character was a whole other dimension.”
Though "A Complete Unknown" doesn't show Chalamet singing entire songs, each song was filmed “from top to tail,” Ted Caplan, the movie's supervising music editor, said.
Chalamet even performed the entire set of Dylan's landmark 1965 Newport Folk Festival performance, which saw him swap his acoustic guitar for an electric one, much to folk music fans' disapproval.
“That was recorded as a full concert; from the Hammer song to ‘Baby Blue,’ it was one run,” Caplan said, adding, “I think it gave it a special live real magic.
"You can see Timmy is so into it and in the mindset of it," Caplan added.
Is Timothée Chalamet playing the guitar in ‘A Complete Unknown’?
In addition to singing, Chalamet played accompanying instruments.
Guitar coach Larry Saltzman told the New York Post he began working with Chalamet in 2019, and said the actor "took to" playing the guitar "immediately."
“He never got hung up on something. He just rose to the occasion every time. I think it’s a combination of hard work and just a gift,” he said.
Executive music producer Nick Baxter explained, speaking to the Gibson Gazette, a publication put out by the guitar manufacturer Gibson, how he worked with Chalamet to learn Dylan’s guitar style. They went through the script and emphasized the “rawness,” Baxter said.
“Dylan’s guitar playing is so unique; it’s sort of messy and violent but also incredibly technically advanced, too. He’s a great player. When you hear some of these early recordings, you can tell he’d been playing guitar all the time, for many years. The technique is there, the playing is there, but there’s a rawness to it. If you don’t capture that, it sounds wrong immediately,” he said.
Chalamet performed harmonica as well, his harmonica coach, Rob Paparozzi, confirmed to the New York Post.
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