Timothee Chalamet was told he doesn't have 'the right body' to shoulder big-budget films

Los Angeles: Actor Timothee Chalamet, who made inroads in Hollywood starring in indie movies like Lady Bird and Beautiful Boy, says an agent once asked him to gain weight to help book blockbuster roles.

Chalamet then tasted success with Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, which also earned him a best actor Academy Award. He went on to star in studio tentpoles Little Women and the Dune franchise.

The actor is now looking forward to the release of A Complete Unknown, a biographical drama film on singing legend Bob Dylan.

“If I auditioned for The Maze Runner or Divergent, things of that variety that were popping when I was coming up, the feedback was always, ‘Oh, you don’t have the right body. I had an agent that called me and said, ‘You got to put on weight,’ basically, not aggressively, but you know,” Chalamet told Zane Lowe in an interview.

This experience eventually helped him prepare for A Complete Unknown, he said.

“I won’t say it’s weird, but I can relate to some of these things (Dylan) went through. Bob wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star — Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Elvis Presley — that was the sort of, depending on your point of view, the sort of rice crispy pop, rock & roll music that was saturated, you know, marketed to kids in the late ’50s. Equally, I wanted to be a big movie actor,” Chalamet added.

He said he found "a very personal style movie" by working in smaller films like Call Me By Your Name, Beautiful Boy, Lady Bird, Little Women, Miss Stevens, and Hot Summer Nights.

"Those were smaller budget (films) but very… I don’t know how else to put it…. personable movies that started in this theatre space. This is where I found my rhythm, my confidence, my flow, whatever you want to call it."

A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold, will hit the screens on Christmas.