‘Do it at the highest level’: Oscar nominee Timothee Chalamet not shy to discuss ambitiousness

LOS ANGELES – After the commercial success of Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024), Timothee Chalamet has little left to prove at the box office, the science-fiction blockbusters cementing his status as a bankable leading man.

But the 30-year-old wants more – and he has been unusually candid about it.

At the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles in February 2025, where he accepted the best actor prize for his performance as American singer Bob Dylan in music biopic A Complete Unknown (2024), Chalamet declared that he aims “to be one of the greats” – on a par with legendary actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis and Marlon Brando.

“I know people don’t usually talk like that, but… I want to be up there,” said the French-American star, who will return as protagonist Paul Atreides in Dune: Part Three in December 2026.

At a November 2025 screening in Los Angeles of his latest film Marty Supreme – a 1950s sports comedy-drama opening in Singapore cinemas on Feb 26 – Chalamet says this ambition is central to how he views his career.

“I feel like, Why pursue this kind of lifestyle? That’s crazy if you’re not trying to do it at the highest level,” says the actor, who plays shoe salesman and table-tennis hustler Marty Mauser, a young man determined to be crowned the best ping-pong player in the world.

A few months later in January 2026, Chalamet got a little closer to his lofty goal when the nominees for the 2026 Academy Awards – which takes place on March 15 – were announced.

With the Marty Supreme nod, he has tied with the late Brando – the legendary star of films such as The Godfather (1972) and Apocalypse Now (1979) – as the youngest person to receive three Best Actor Oscar nominations by age 30.

The first two were for Chalamet’s performances in romantic drama Call Me By Your Name (2017) and A Complete Unknown. But Marty Supreme – a critical and commercial smash – is seen as his best shot yet to win.

Entertainment studio A24 has bankrolled an aggressive Oscars campaign for the film’s nine nominations, which include the awards for Best Picture and Best Director (Josh Safdie).

And Chalamet is considered a strong contender for his category despite stiff competition from American actors Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another, 2025) and Michael B. Jordan (Sinners, 2025).

Chalamet believes he may have picked up a bit of Marty’s ambitiousness as well because he fully inhabits each role.

“I feel like every character I play – because I’m a personality-less bag of flesh that just gets assigned roles – rubs off on me in some way,” he says.

And he drew inspiration from one of the central themes of the story, which is “the pursuit of something in life – a passion that you have, absent financial glory, absent widespread fame”.

“There’s something so sincere about it.”

Chalamet – who is dating American reality star Kylie Jenner, 28 – also credits his co-star Gwyneth Paltrow as a “legend” who inspires him to be a better actor.

Paltrow plays a fading movie star Marty has a fling with – the first major role in more than a decade for the American actress, who stepped back from Hollywood to focus on her lifestyle brand Goop.

The 53-year-old says she was lured out of semi-retirement by the prospect of working with both Chalamet and Safdie, the 41-year-old American film-maker behind acclaimed indie crime dramas such as Uncut Gems (2019).

And the timing was right because her two children with 48-year-old Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, her former husband, are now 21 and 19.

“It was at a time of my life when I was coming to the end of a chapter of everybody living under one roof,” says Paltrow, who won a Best Actress Oscar for the romantic comedy Shakespeare In Love (1998), and had a supporting role as Iron Man’s love interest Pepper Potts in Marvel films such as Avengers: Endgame (2019).

“I felt a tremendous sadness, but also a possibility of freedom to maybe go back (to acting).

“And I was really excited to work with Timmy, who I think is just the most incredible actor,” she adds of Chalamet, with whom she has multiple steamy love scenes.

“I was nervous coming back in and he was so nice to me – and it was such a great experience.”