Timothee Chalamet lost 9kg, begged on knees for Beautiful Boy role
US actor Timothee Chalamet wanted to show complex issue of addiction
Timothee Chalamet hopes many young people will see his latest movie, but acknowledged it's "not the easiest sell".
The 22-year-old US actor is talking about Beautiful Boy, a brutal real-life account of a young man's (Chalamet) relationship with his distraught dad (Steve Carell) and the effect the former's meth addiction has on his family.
Based on a couple of best-selling memoirs written by father and son David and Nic Sheff, the biographical drama - which opens here tomorrow - combines both perspectives as they go through the cycle of rehab, broken promises and rage in their journey, realising that addiction isn't confined to the poverty-stricken and there are no easy answers or cures.
At our interview at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel, Chalamet said he had to audition for the part.
He was cast before becoming a rising star in Hollywood, after his Oscar nomination for last year's buzz-worthy gay romance Call Me By Your Name, which made him the third-youngest nominee in the Best Actor category.
He said: "I auditioned three or four times before I read with Steve Carrell and it was a big process to get into it. And it's funny because the dream as an actor is to get things offered to you, because auditioning can be difficult. But if there's a gift in it, it's that you feel like you have earned it in some way."
He added: "(Director) Felix (Van Groeningen) gave me this role when there were actors coming in that had names or careers or whatever and I didn't have nothing. The first meeting with him, I basically got on my knees and was like please, please, please let me do this. Like, literally."
Why did Chalamet feel so compelled to be part of Beautiful Boy?
"I can gratefully say, thank God I didn't have any direct experience with anything in this movie. But growing up in New York, in the heart of Hell's Kitchen, certainly I've seen people not only experimenting with this stuff, but really caught in the throes of it too.
"That's where I felt a need and an urgency to do it. Addiction knows no race, class, gender. This is a complex disease, similar to depression. It can affect everyone."
In order to prepare, he visited rehab centres and watched YouTube videos of people suffering physical effects of addictions.
Van Groeningen also made him lose weight right away.
"He told me from the top, you must lose 20 pounds (9kg) to do this movie. It wasn't 20, finally it was 18. I started out at 131 pounds, and the scenes you see in the hospital and the diner, I was 113 pounds."
Even though Beautiful Boy was very well received at the recent film festivals and Call Me By Your Name shot him to fame, he insisted nothing much has changed.
"The truth is, my career and my life are still very manageable at this point. If I want to go unseen in the street, it's fine, no one will bother me and I just put a cap on or whatever. So it's really not overwhelming in that regard."
The writer is the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a non-profit organisation of entertainment journalists that also organises the annual Golden Globe Awards.
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