Bob Dylan Weighs In On Timothée Chalamet In ‘A Complete Unknown’

Tom Tapp

Wed, December 4, 2024 at 8:12 PM UTC

2 min read

Timothee Chalamet received praise from Bob Dylan for his performance in the upcoming film A Complete Unknown.
The film is based on the book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald, which Dylan himself endorsed.
Chalamet's portrayal of Bob Dylan has been lauded as "the performance of the year" by critics and industry professionals.

At the Gotham Awards last weekend, Timothée Chalamet called the five years he’s spent prepping to play Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown “the greatest education a young artist could receive.”

Chalamet’s Dune co-star Oscar Isaac put the stakes of the performance more succinctly.

More from Deadline

“I mean it’s Dylan — the Holy of Holies,” Isaac said at the Gothams. Isaac is not unfamiliar with the terrain, having played a Dylan-adjacent folk singer in the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis .

Now, the Holy of Holies himself has weighed in on Chalamet’s efforts in director James Mangold’s upcoming film.

In a post on X, Dylan offered a surprisingly positive but typically elliptical assessment.

“Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me,” the Grammy, Oscar and Nobel Prize winner wrote.

Dylan also endorsed the book on which the film is based.

“The film’s taken from Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric – a book that came out in 2015. It’s a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport. After you’ve seen the movie read the book,” he wrote.

First reactions to Chalamet’s work in the film have been effusive, with some calling it “the performance of the year.”

The awards circuit boffins seem to agree, with Chalamet and Mangold the subjects of a Visionary Tribute at the Gothams and Chalamet set to receive the Palm Springs Film Festival’s 2025 Chairman’s Award in January.

Watch the trailer for A Complete Unknown below.

Best of Deadline

Entertainment: