Timothée Chalamet is answering the question “How does it feel?!” to be playing singer Bob Dylan.
The “Dune” actor, who stars in the new biopic “A Complete Unknown,” out Dec. 25, admitted he was “panicked” to take on the role of the iconic “Like a Rolling Stone” crooner.
“It was something I would go to sleep panicked about, losing a moment of discovery as the character — no matter how pretentious that sounds — because I was on my phone or because of any distraction,” Chalamet, 28, told Rolling Stone for its December cover story.
“I had three months of my life to play Bob Dylan, after five years of preparing to play him. So while I was in it, that was my eternal focus. He deserved that and then more … God forbid I missed a step because I was being Timmy. I could be Timmy for the rest of my life!”
The film, directed by James Mangold (“Walk the Line”), is set in 1960s New York City, when Dylan was getting his start in Greenwich Village. The actor — determined to do Dylan justice — was an intense presence on set.
“He was relentless,” said Edward Norton, who plays Pete Seeger in the film. “No visitors, no friends, no reps, no nothing. ‘Nobody comes around us while we’re doing this.’”
“We’re trying to do the best we can with something that’s so totemic and sacrosanct to many people. And I agreed totally — it was like, we cannot have a f–king audience for this. We’ve got to believe to the greatest degree we can. And he was right to be that protective.”
To lend the musical performances some authenticity, Chalamet sang and played guitar live during filming.
“You can’t re-create it in the studio,” said the actor, who showed off his singing chops in last year’s “Wonka.”
“If I was singing to a prerecorded guitar, then all of a sudden I could hear the lack of an arm movement in my voice.”
His guitar teacher for the film added that Chalamet was totally committed to strumming the right way.
“He never wanted to take the easy way out,” Larry Salzman told the mag. “If I presented something to him like, ‘OK, this is the real way, but there’s a little bit of a shortcut,’ his answer to that was always ‘Don’t show me the shortcut.’”
Co-star Elle Fanning, who plays Dylan’s first New York girlfriend, also praised Chalamet’s musical ability.
“We were in an auditorium, and I was sitting amongst all these background artists. Jim would let Timmy come out and give the crowd a whole concert. He was singing ‘Masters of War’ and ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,’ and I was like, ‘Jesus.’ All of us were kind of shaking, because it was so surreal hearing someone do that,” she recalled to Rolling Stone. “So perfectly done, but it wasn’t a caricature. It was still Timmy, but it’s Bob, and this kind of beautiful meld. That gave me chills.”
New York-born Chalamet, who got his start in indie films such as “Call Me By Your Name” and “Hot Summer Nights” and went on to lead major blockbusters, sees parallels in his and Dylan’s careers.
“If he couldn’t become Elvis or Buddy Holly immediately, he found Woody Guthrie and stuff that was a little more accomplishable, and happened to be really good at it,” Chalamet said.
“And that immediately hit a bone with me … I was knocking on one door that wouldn’t open. So I went to what I thought was a more humble door [with indie roles], but actually ended up being explosive for me.”