Timothée Chalamet brought James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, the story of Bob Dylan’s first four years in New York, to its UK premiere at BFI Southbank.
Timothée Chalamet, who plays Bob Dylan, brought James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown to BFI Southbank on the South Bank for its UK premiere on Tuesday 14 January 2025. Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro joined him.
Chalamet was born in Manhattan in 1995 to a French father and an American mother. He trained at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, and a recurring part in Homeland brought him to notice.
Call Me by Your Name made him, at 22, one of the youngest nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Dune, Little Women and Wonka followed.
For Dylan he spent five years learning the guitar and harmonica, and he sang every song in the film himself.
Mangold wrote the screenplay with Jay Cocks from Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric. It runs from 1961, when a nineteen-year-old Dylan visits Woody Guthrie in hospital, to the Newport Folk Festival of 1965, where he plugged in an electric guitar.
Norton plays the folk singer Pete Seeger and Barbaro plays Joan Baez. The film went on to eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and both actors were among the nominees.