Timothée Chalamet has been selling performances ever since his breakthrough turn in 2017’s “Call Me by Your Name.” Whether they’ve been true standouts (“Dune”) or less than stellar (“A Complete Unknown”), the 29-year-old actor, even still at what feels like early on in his career, has been eager to reach the heights of undeniable critical acclaim as a serious movie star.
Chalamet said as much in his now-famous SAG Awards acceptance speech earlier this year, in which he proclaimed that he was “in pursuit of greatness,” evoking the names of “greats” like Viola Davis, Marlon Brando and Daniel Day-Lewis.
That may very well be Chalamet’s outlook on his accomplished film profile. He also could’ve been emulating his over-confident character Marty Mauser from his latest big-screen offering, “Marty Supreme,” the frenzied, 1950s-set pingpong affair from “Uncut Gems” co-director Josh Safdie, which hits theaters Christmas Day. In it, Chalamet plays an egotistical, entitled and pretty charming young man, who, like the actor’s speech, goes through hell and high water “in pursuit of greatness” as a pingpong prodigy, so the movie’s vague synopsis says. That description eventually becomes clear over the movie’s extensive 149-minute runtime, though.
