In 2014, Timothée Chalamet started popping up in movies, and since then, he hasn’t really stopped. That being said, his first big movie was a truly massive one, but he wasn’t in it a ton, and it was Interstellarso if director Christopher Nolan wasn’t the biggest name there, there were also the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastainand Michael Cainefor starters. Massive ensemble cast the way you get for most Nolan movies. But Chalamet was there, playing the younger version of Casey Affleck’s character. It was probably 2017 when Timothée Chalamet first started to get recognized thanks to key roles in some great coming-of-age movies released that year, with both of them getting Academy Awards attention, and then things kept snowballing. 2025 has been a big year for him, again, as far as the Academy Awards are concerned, with some, at the time of writing, predicting a win for him in 2026 (the year movies from 2025 are celebrated; gotta love that yearly confusion). He went back to the realm of sci-fi blockbusters almost a decade after Interstellarappearing in both Dune and Dune: Part Twobut the difference was that he was the lead in both films.
Maybe all that’s redundant to go over, because of all the relatively young actors who have picked up steam and attracted recognition in the past decade or so, Chalamet’s one of the very best. You can get a sense of that when going over his whole filmography, of course, but dramas often showcase actors at their full potential, being dramatic movies and all, so that’s the focus here. Interstellar might be a sci-fi/drama film, but it (and the Dune movies) are most definable as science fiction ones, so they’re not counted. The same goes for Bones and Allbut because it’s a horror movie, and uh, A Complete Unknown isn’t here. Not because Chalamet’s bad in it (he does a fine Bob Dylan impression), but because it’s boring, and a biopic, and a boring biopic is much worse than a regular old boring movie of just about any other genre.
5
‘Beautiful Boy’ (2018)
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Out of all the movies here, it’s hardest to know what to say about Beautiful Boy. It’s probably the simplest, even if it’s got a little more ambition than the aforementioned A Complete Unknown. It’s trying fairly hard, but there is something here, or maybe just enough. Anyway, it’s a movie about addictionwith Timothée Chalamet playing a teenager who’s become dependent on methamphetamine, with Beautiful Boy also being about the strain this puts on the relationship he has with his father (Steve Carell).
It’s also a biopic, based on two different memoirs written by the real-life people Chalamet and Carell play. In that sense, it’s authentic enough, even if it feels like it treads some familiar territory as far as movies about drugs go. Maybe it’s the sort of thing you most watch for the performances, and in that sense, Beautiful Boy does offer a strong early one by Chalametand Carell turns in one of his better dramatic performances here, too, so at least the film’s a success on that front.
4
‘Lady Bird’ (2017)
Lady Bird was Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debutand she’s gone on to do bigger and better things since, a bit like Chalamet, who had one of his earliest supporting roles in this movie. It’s mostly Saoirse Ronan’s movie, though, as she’s the central character, and Lady Bird is basically about her clashing with her mother about various things while coming of age as a 17-year-old. Lots of it’s played for drama, but Lady Bird can also be funny at times.
Lady Bird is really good… and Timothée Chalamet is also very good in it, even if it’s not a particularly showy role and he’s not a constant presence throughout.
So, maybe it rides the line between drama and comedy a bit throughout, but if you had to pick one, maybe drama? Like, the sad parts might be sadder than the funny parts are funnybut that shouldn’t indicate that said funny moments should be dismissed entirely. It’s really good, is the main thing, and Timothée Chalamet is also very good, even if it’s not a particularly showy role and he’s not a constant presence throughout (again, not really his character’s movie or anything).
3
‘Little Women’ (2019)
Another Greta Gerwig coming-of-age movie starring Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet, Little Women is another great late 2010s movie, and it fits neater within the confines of the drama genre than Lady Bird. It’s one of many adaptations of the Louisa May Alcott novel of the same name, but Little Women (2019) does bring a new energy to it that makes it surprisingly approachable, even if you don’t think you’re the kind of person who’d necessarily like a movie about four young sisters growing up and facing hardships in the years following the Civil War.
Calling any movie one of the best of 2019 is a pretty big deal, since that was a pretty monumental year for cinema, but Little Women does deserve to be considered such. It showed Lady Bird was no fluke, and it was another good performance of Chalamet’s. The focus is on the women, little or otherwise, but he’s given what’s probably the most prominent male role here, and does ultimately impress in the scenes he has.
2
‘Call Me by Your Name’ (2017)
Released the same year as Lady Bird, Call Me by Your Name was another Timothée Chalamet coming-of-age movie that helped get him recognition, but this one’s even more noteworthy when talking about Chalamet specifically, since he’s the star here, rather than a supporting player. It takes place during the 1980s, mostly over one summer spent in the Italian countryside, with Chalamet playing a young man who begins to develop feelings for another man who’s… not quite as young. The age gap has caused discourse, and if it’s a dealbreaker for you, hey, it’s a free country, or if you’re not in a free country, then you’re free to feel however you want about Call Me by Your Name. The age difference is important for the story being told, though, since Chalamet’s character is experiencing intense feelings of love for the first timebut the other character, played by Armie Hammerisn’t quite on the same page, and is at a different stage of his own life.
So, that does lead to some obvious sadnessand that’s a perfectly fine avenue for a coming-of-age movie to take, because growing up can be awful and heartbreaking. But Call Me by Your Name isn’t just misery, as it has to contrast the good times with the comedown to highlight the roller-coaster nature of being in your teens, or entering young adulthood. All that might sound obvious, and it is indeed territory that plenty of other movies have explored before, but Call Me by Your Name really does explore it particularly well. As for Timothée Chalamet, this was a real “wow, who’s this guy?” kind of performance. Like, Call Me by Your Name might not have been a blockbuster, but if you were into awards contenders or movies that got smaller releases around 2017, and you saw Call Me by Your Nameyou can probably remember Chalamet making an impression, and he truly did more than earn his first Oscar nomination for his performance here.
1
‘Marty Supreme’ (2025)
When Marty Supreme was announced as a new movie by one of the Safdie brothers (Josh), people were immediately like, “Is it going to be Uncut Gemsbut with table tennis?” And it pretty much was. But that’s okay, because Uncut Gems was amazingand table tennis is a kind of untapped sport as far as movies are concerned. Like, there was some of it in Forrest Gumpif that counts, and then there’s also a comedy called Balls of Furybut a true table tennis drama was untapped territory. Hell, maybe it still is. For all this talk about table tennisthere’s quite a lot of Marty Supreme that’s not really focused on the sport itself. Also, while this is primarily a drama, it can be quite funny at points, all the while also feeling a little like a thriller, and with some crime elements thrown in for good measure. It’s also some other things, but they’re best left discovered if you’ve not seen the film yet (at the time of writing, it’s still fairly recent and competing for Oscars and stuff).
It’s a drama. You could call it that broadly, even if it’s ambitious enough to be some other things. Marty Supreme shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it really is one of the best movies in recent years, and Chalamet is one of the standout parts of it (or maybe even the standout part of the whole thing). He’s Marty Mauser, the main character, and the character’s pretty awful, yet very compelling. He’s interesting, and a mix of arrogant, tragic, naïve, and reckless. He has terrible luck, but he also makes terrible decisions, and watching him hustle his way through life quite poorly is very entertainingeven when his life story is also sad and unnerving. It’s a pretty much perfect role for Timothée Chalamet, and he also happens to play it perfectly, so calling Marty Supreme his best movie (and the one that contains his best performance) to date really doesn’t feel like a stretch.