The 12 Best Timothée Chalamet Movies, Ranked

It's been a while since Hollywood's star factory cranked out a genuine, organic sensation quite like Timothée Chalamet. He's the rare marquee name who can command attention off the screen with his vivacious personality as well as hold it on-screen with his acting talents. It's possible to point to previous celebrities and thespians he recalls, but what's most remarkable about the rise of Timothée Chalamet is that he feels like something entirely new and unexpected to behold. He's at the forefront of a new generation of leading men who are out to deconstruct and demolish traditional ideas of what on-screen masculinity can and should be.

In under a decade since his big-screen debut, he's already forged a formidable path through the industry that is breaking new ground for those to follow behind him. Though he charged onto the scene for most with 2017's "Call Me by Your Name," the role for which he received an Oscar nomination, Chalamet had already worked with established names like Jason Reitman and Christopher Nolan — not to mention turned in an attention-grabbing performance in "Miss Stevens." 

Since rising to the vanguard of young Hollywood, he's opened a huge tentpole in "Dune," joined an inestimable Wes Anderson ensemble, collaborated closely with Greta Gerwig on her first two features, and become something of a muse for Luca Guadagnino. One senses, too, that the best is still yet to come. On the occasion of Chalamet's latest big-screen turn in "Bones and All," we take a look at a dozen of his most memorable movie roles.

Timothée Chalamet has but a brief role in Scott Cooper's "Hostiles," a 2017 Western film that far too few saw thanks to its odd distribution by Byron Allen's fledgling unit Entertainment Studios. Chalamet plays a supporting role as Pvt. Philippe DeJardin, trading nicely on his French descent. In 1892, he's part of a group of soldiers tasked with transit for Cheyenne war chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) from New Mexico back to his tribal lands in Montana. DeJardin's youth plays a large role in what little we see of his character, but Chalamet makes the most of his scenes. He plays up the put-on toughness of DeJardin, so it's clear how he comes across to the rest of the army detail: a boy amongst men.

The film cannot rank particularly high in Chalamet's filmography because he's simply in it so seldom. But if tempted to turn off the film after Chalamet's early exit, stick around because "Hostiles" has a lot to offer even without his presence. Every Christian Bale performance is at least somewhat interesting, and he's doing some sturdy work here as Capt. Joseph Blocker, a weary soldier who resists his final assignment until threatened with a court martial. Cooper avoids the lazy tropes of transforming a grizzled bigot by virtue of compassionate exposure to a group he dislikes, weaving a more complicated moral and physical journey for Blocker and the characters. The film also features a standout performance by Rosamund Pike, who loses her family in an attack by Comanches and must navigate her way through the trauma alongside the detail once they find her on their quest.

2019's "The King" was Timothée Chalamet's first film that belonged to him and him alone. Save for Robert Pattinson's brief but uproarious turn as the Dauphin of France, campy accent work and all, he commands the frame from start to finish. It's not hard to see what attracted Chalamet to take the role as his star blew up in the industry — the story of his character Hal echoes his own evolution from a teen to a man.

Don't let the modest name fool you. Hal is the pet name for the boy who would soon become England's King Henry V during the Middle Ages. He begins "The King" as a lad of modest aims and intentions entirely uninterested in assuming the throne. But after the death of his father and brother, he's forced with no choice but to take the crown. 

What follows is nothing of the grandiloquent sort of drama you might expect of the Shakespearean plays from which David Michôd and Joel Edgerton adapt the film. This is a gritty, grounded tale that's more interested in Hal's mumblings as he struggles to articulate his authority both to others and himself, perhaps to the film's ultimate detriment. This gray, grimy war flick is as murky as the mud on which Hal must fight for his country. Chalamet disappears inside the twisted, tortured psychology of his character in "The King." It's an unusually muted performance from the normally extroverted and physical performer, but the turn works because he commits to the brooding.

Timothée Chalamet has primarily followed the Leonardo DiCaprio trajectory to avoid being pigeonholed as a teen idol. That is to say, he's tread an almost exclusively solemn and serious path in the five years after breaking out. But no one can resist taking a role in a Wes Anderson movie, now can they? Chalamet showed some serious comedic chops leading one of the vignettes within "The French Dispatch" (and held his own as scene and romantic partner Frances McDormand, to boot). Should he ever want to go all-in on doing lighter fare, he could easily shift genres.

Anderson wisely leans on someone with Chalamet's pre-existing iconography to play Zeffirelli, the student leader of a French student revolution in the model of the May '68 protests. He's possessed with the kind of contagious zeal that defies logic or explanation; it simply must be felt. Chalamet instantly lights up the screen with his charismatic energy, a remarkable feat given the gnarly pencil-thin trash 'stache adorning his upper lip. He's deft with the delivery of Anderson's droll dialogue and committed to the off-beat sexual energy he shares with McDormand's Lucinda Krementz, a reporter from the titular newspaper assigned to report on his would-be revolution.

Chalamet avoids the worst tendencies of actors in a Wes Anderson film, who often resort to a rote recitation of the lines with a pronounced affection that renders them into cinematic paper dolls. His Zeffirelli is flesh and blood, at turns smug and sincere. It's too bad there's not a whole movie about this character rather than just one chapter of him.

If actors were commodities purchasable on a stock market, anyone who bought into Timothée Chalamet after seeing "Miss Stevens" would be filthy rich now. This is the real breakthrough performance for the actor. It's the first real showcase of his full talents from impulsive physicality to tender vulnerability. Like many a Chalamet performance, there's an exquisite tension between the character's lack of certainty and the performer's undeniable confidence in portraying such confusion.

Chalamet gives a preternaturally assured turn in Julia Hart's film as misunderstood teen Billy Mitman. He's a troubled but talented student who finds expression for his angst through art; specifically, drama. At his school, however, that program's funding is so on ice that Lily Rabe's titular English teacher must accompany a group of three students to their monologue competition. Billy and Miss Stevens, still coming of age herself at 29, strike up an odd companionship as each navigates their own hang-ups and doubts in the open. She sees past the fears of his peers, who view his temperamental relationship with newly prescribed behavioral medications as reason to regard him as some kind of ticking time bomb.

It's to the great credit of director Julia Hart, who co-wrote the script with husband and producer Jordan Horowitz, that they simply lean back to let Chalamet and Rabe make magic. She's fond of the loose, Richard Linklater-style "walk-and-talk" where the camera hangs back to observe a casual conversation between characters. The film does not force Chalamet to shove Billy into some kind of easily recognizable box nor map his relationship with Miss Stevens into a familiar formulation. It's just humanity in all its messy majesty, laid out before us with authenticity and accuracy.

In Luca Guadagnino's "Bones and All," Timothée Chalamet delivers the type of performance that's clearly the result of a collaboration between an actor and a director who knows them well enough to push them out of their comfort zone. In many ways, the itinerant cannibal Lee shares much in common with his sentimental and sensuous turn as Elio from "Call Me by Your Name." Both young men seek love and connection in a world where they do not feel they can be accepted as themselves.

But Guadagnino goes a step further here, asking Chalamet to start by playing the character as confident only to have those defenses slowly chipped away as he falls for fellow flesh-eater Maren (Taylor Russell). When Lee first struts across the screen in "Bones and All," he exudes an unflappable cool that cannot help but lure people into his orbit. He knows the pull he has on other people, too, and justifies weaponizing it to draw in the people he desires to devour. His roguish charms are his strength, a potent defense mechanism against a world that has no place for his kind. They're also his weakness, as they preclude him from experiencing intimacy even with someone who might understand his struggles.

Ultimately, Guadagnino is far less interested in the blood going down Lee and Maren's gullets and far more captivated by the blood rushing into their hearts. Their love on the run is fast, frenzied, and utterly infatuating because Chalamet — alongside Russell — methodically strips back all his character's posturing and performativity until we see the scars on his very spirit.

The performance that made Timothée Chalamet the youngest Best Actor nominee in 80 years still retains all its power. As Elio in "Call Me by Your Name," Chalamet delivers a masterclass in coming-of-age before the camera. His jaded teenager gets jolted out of his aloof apathy by the arrival of the American student Oliver (Armie Hammer) to study with his father (Michael Stuhlbarg) at their villa in Italy. The two feel a quick kindling of attraction that neither is quite ready to act upon, especially because both are performing the heteronormative masculinity of their '80s-era setting. And Elio, for all his wiles and wits, maintains all the insecurities and immaturities of an inexperienced teenage boy.

Chalamet stays attuned to the physical impulses of Elio to a frightening degree, abandoning studied mannerisms in his approach to the character and letting all his contradictory impulses run free. It's a case study of the confusions of adolescence, where one's body acts in ways the mind cannot understand and must catch up with. 

With great sincerity and sensuality alike, director Luca Guadagnino surveys this burgeoning summer romance in "Call Me by Your Name." He captures the beauty and the tragedy of two people who fumble their way towards an expression of the desire and affection they feel for one another yet cannot figure out how to sustain it outside the throes of one passionate season. Chalamet's soul and self are entirely out in the open in the film, with his heart beating out of his chest as it's made and broken before our eyes. As Elio experiences all the emotions of first love as a character, so does the audience experience that first bit of identification and affection for Chalamet as a performer.