Making Himself Known | Timothée Chalamet Stars as Himself in SBIFF Conversation with Josh Brolin

Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Arlington Artist of the Year Award is a Memorable Bro-Fest of Fun

Josh Brolin, right, wasn't the only one laughing as Timothee Chalamet gave a lively interview in being honored with SBIFF's Arlington Artist of the Year Award on February 11, 2025. | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

For an actor to have starred in not just ONE, but TWO Academy Award Best Picture nominated films in one year is quite extraordinary, but as Timothée Chalamet said on Tuesday night, he’s just getting started. The 29-year-old — who had top billing in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 2, as well as in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown — was celebrated with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Arlington Artist of the Year Award on February 11, a prestigious achievement-retrospective honor that is certainly unusual for one so young.

But there’s nothing very “usual” about Chalamet, who was the youngest Best Actor Oscar nominee since 1939 for his breakout role as a lovestruck teenager in Luca Guadagnino’s coming-of-age film Call Me By Your Name in 2017. In a highly entertaining interview with Josh Brolin — Chalamet’s co-star in the Dune films and a surprise (at least to the audience) last minute addition to the Arlington award program, who joked that during the filming of Dune was “the first time that I have ever been called an old man” — they discussed much of Chalamet’s work in a collegial and affectionate fashion that was a nice contrast to the typically more formal tribute interviews.

Honoree Timothée Chalamet attends the Arlington Artist Award ceremony during the 40th Santa Barbara International Film Festival at The Arlington Theatre on February 11, 2025 | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

Brought up in a performing arts family in New York City, Chalamet got cheers from the audience when he said, “I’m really a product of public arts education.” He credits his experiences at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts with fostering the desire to be an actor. “I fell in love with it immediately,” said Chalamet, who followed his older sister Pauline Chalamet (currently starring in Mindy Kaling’s HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls) to the performing arts high school, which the film Fame is famously based on.

With the many young, high-pitched screamers in the audience in mind, Brolin asked if he had any advice for people who wanted to be actors. “Do theater,” said Chalamet. “Find your super power and stick with it. Do reps, do laps, and that’s theater,” he said.

“You were like a young adolescent basset hound when I met you,” said Brolin. “You hugged me like 30-40 times. You’re a great f@#king role model.”

Chalamet, who still has plenty of that puppy energy left, grinned at Brolin and turned to the audience and pointed to his friend, “This is a really good man. … I just want to give you your flowers now.”

While Brolin does indeed deserve props for his deft handling of the interview, the evening was focused on Chalamet, with a look at his work in Call Me By Your Name (along with a moving video salute from his director Guadagnino) and Lady Bird. Speaking of Greta Gerwig, his director on that film as well as Little Women, Chalamet said, “Greta is intense. Greta is like a foot-on-their-neck person. A genius, she’s really got her eye on the prize; she’s a beast!”

Beautiful Boy from director Felix Van Groeningen got the spotlight next. Based on a true story about a young drug addict and his strained relationship with his father (Steve Carrell), and a pair of memoirs by father and son (journalist David Sheff and Nic Sheff). Chalamet said of his portrayal of the meth-addicted Nic, “I’m proud of all my work, but that movie, I am really, really proud of that.”

It was scary, Chalamet admits. “Honestly it was, because the material was really dark, it honestly was. I don’t know how to put it. I had to shoot in L.A. and had never left New York to shoot a project that long and wasn’t an adult yet in many ways.”

Josh Brolin, left, Timothee Chalamet, James Mangold, and Roger Durling | Photo: by Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for SBIFF

Other films they discussed included Don’t Look Up, The King, Dune, Dune: Part 2, Wonka, and of course, Chalamet’s current release for which he is nominated for a Best Actor Oscar: A Complete Unknown. Playing the young Bob Dylan was, as Chalamet put it, “a lifetime’s work.”

He continued, “The respect and passion I feel for Bob Dylan and his music was so great that it took me out of myself. … Without disrespecting my other performances and stuff that is to come, this was a lifetime’s work.”

A Complete Unknown writer-director James Mangold presented Chalamet with the award after commenting on the evening’s entertaining bro-fest of a tribute: “After watching this rambling Phil Donahue show … what I wrote is out the window.” The thing about working with Chalamet, he said, “there’s a commitment to him to be real. … It’s really important that earnestness and truthfulness are celebrated.”

In keeping with the truthfulness, before accepting the award itself, Chalamet admitted that he really, really had to pee, and raced offstage for a couple minutes leaving SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling to vamp for a bit before Chalamet returned to give a thank you speech.

“Thank you to the incomparable Bob Dylan, an artist who left behind a body of work that has come to possess me like the holy spirit,” he said.

Chalamet continued, “You’re only as vibrant as your surroundings, and I’ve been lucky in my come up to be surrounded by deep and passionate and open thinkers like James Mangold and Josh Brolin and to be inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and James Baldwin. … I seek to leave behind a body of work that can do the same for someone else one day.”