They Discovered Timmy

Chalamet's earliest directors on all the signs he'd be a star.

- MATTHEW JACOBS

HE BOUNDED INTO the room wearing a backpack and a baseball cap. He shook people's hands. He told them how much this opportunity meant to him, a gangly teenager with a viral rap about statistics under his belt and his sights set on the big leagues: Broadway, Hollywood. Everyone was smitten with Timmy. Timo. Here came a guy who could communicate like an adult, then slip seamlessly into the unpolished charm of the kid he was. Today, Timothée Chalamet is the figurehead for a cohort of sensitive actors who competed for supporting parts in the 2010s and now have top billing. If he was auditioning, there's a good chance Lucas Hedges and Tom Holland were, too. But Chalamet became the generational icon, the golden god of couture, the cinephile charting a career that evokes James Dean's. Here, directors and casting agents who collaborated with Chalamet before his star-making role in 2017's Call Me by Your Name look back at his early promise.

Judy Henderson CASTING DIRECTOR, Homeland (2012)

THE ROLE: The spoiled but fetching son of the U.S. vice-president who romances the daughter of a war hero.