Did the Best Actor Oscar Path Just Clear Up For Timothée Chalamet?
Timothée Chalamet hasn’t been shy about his desire to win an Oscar. After last night’s Golden Globes it now looks more likely than ever that his wish will come true. Beating out George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke, Lee Byung-Hun, and Jesse Plemons, Chalamet won the Globes Best Male Actor in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy category for his work as the tirelessly ambitious table tennis player Marty Mauser in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. That doesn’t make Chalamet a lock to win the Best Actor trophy at this year’s Academy Awards — the nominees won’t even be announced until January 22nd. But it does provide a strong indicator that Chalamet’s performance might be the one to beat in what’s shaping up to be a competitive year.
Though a win at the Golden Globes is not a sure sign of imminent Oscar glory it certainly doesn’t hurt. While some recent winners of the Best Actor Oscar, like Brendan Fraser and Anthony Hopkins, went Globe-less before taking home the big prize, there’s a long history of the Globes serving as an Oscars stepping stone. The past few years have seen both Cillian Murphy and Adrien Brody win the Globes dramatic Best Actor prior to winning the Best Actor Academy Award. The Globes are awarded by Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a nebulous organization with a dubious history (albeit one that has seemingly managed to quiet the controversies that led to widespread boycotts and the awards disappearance from television just four years ago). But, as lightweight as the awards may ultimately be (and the introduction of a prize for “Cinematic and Box Office Achievement” has done little to change that perception), a Globes win is certainly not meaningless.
The win is the latest sign that this could be Chalamet’s year, but it’s also something of a late-breaking development. The film premiered via a secret screening at the New York Film Festival on October 6th, a relatively late spot in the festival season, and didn’t arrive in theaters until Christmas. But the A24 release has outperformed box office expectations and enjoyed strong reviews with Chalamet’s performance earning particular praise.
It’s not hard to see why. Chalamet plays Marty as a charming rogue with little regard for the collateral damage he creates as he single-mindedly charges toward his goal of becoming a table tennis star in the early 1950s. He continually wrongs then wins back the support of those around him, a cast of supporting characters that includes everyone from the mother of the unborn child he refuses to acknowledge as his to a business tycoon. To play Marty, Chalamet has to pull off a similar trick, trusting that his charisma can keep the audience on Marty’s side no matter what he says or does.
It’s the sort of performance that makes believers out of doubters, though recent years have seen the ranks of Chalamet doubters thin. Chalamet earned his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his work in Call Me By Your Name, a prize that ultimately went to Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour. Chalamet was still in his early twenties and playing a character in his teens, just as he did in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird the same year. Youth and good looks can cause an actor to get written off as a lightweight no matter what their talent (look no further than Robert Pattinson and Chalamet’s once and likely future awards competitor Leonardo di Caprio). But the Dune movies and last year’s A Complete Unknown, the latter of which earned Chalamet his second Oscar nomination, have combined to help establish Chalamet’s grown-up bona fides and shed his teen idol image.
