Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Timothée Chalamet Says He ‘Wept For Hours’ After High-Pressure Audition

Timothée Chalamet took an industrial drill to our hearts with his performance in “Call Me By Your Name” and looks posed to do the same in the upcoming “Beautiful Boy” with Steve Carell. So it’s good to know that Tim cries, too.

Human china-doll Chalamet is no longer a rising star. A more apt metaphor might be a luminous, opalescent moon the public gazes at in great wonder. The 22-year-old Jewish actor’s combination of bird-boned physicality and emotiveness won audiences hearts last year in two Oscar nominated films — “Call Me” as well as “Lady Bird” — but Chalamet doesn’t always win.

In an interview with Time Out London, the young star spoke candidly about the painful process of auditions and rejection. Asked if his workload is ever overwhelming, he responded, “I’d rather be stressed out over how much work I’m doing than sitting in an apartment on 163rd Street and Grand Concourse in the Bronx, waiting for the phone to ring. Or taping an audition for “The Neon Demon” that I rehearsed for a week and sent in, and they didn’t respond. Or for “The Theory of Everything” or “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”.”

And even before those fateful phone calls, the process of going out, again and again, for roles is grating. Chalamet said of high-pressure auditions, “I don’t deal with them – I don’t know how. Please tell me how. ‘White Boy Rick’ is a movie that’s coming out. I wept for hours after doing that audition.”

via GIPHY

Wept for hours! About “White Boy Rick”! A Matthew McConaughey movie that got a 58% from Rotten Tomatoes! Even Timothée Chalamet doesn’t always get what he wants.

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.