Bob Dylan Is Sure Timothée Chalamet Will Be “Completely Believable as Me” in ‘A Complete Unknown’

Bob Dylan has no qualms about Timothée Chalamet‘s portrayal of him in James Mangold’s upcoming A Complete Unknown.

“There’s a movie about me opening soon called A Complete Unknown (what a title!),” Dylan wrote on social media on Wednesday. “Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”

Mangold’s film is set in the summer of 1961, when a 19-year-old Dylan arrived in New York City from Minnesota with little else than his guitar. The movie is based on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which explores the controversy surrounding Dylan’s switch to electrically amplified instrumentation.

Related Stories

Barack Obama's Favorite Movies, Music, Books of 2024: 'Dune: Part Two,' 'A Complete Unkown,' 'Anora' Make List

Levi's Reproduces Bob Dylan's Wardrobe With Limited-Edition 'A Complete Unknown' Capsule

Dylan wrote on Wednesday that the book is “a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport,” and added, “After you’ve seen the movie read the book.”

Chalamet recently opened up to Zane Lowe about feeling connected to Dylan’s story. “I’ve had a life experience, I won’t say it’s weird, but I can relate to some of these things [Bob Dylan] went through,” Chalamet said. “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 ‘n’ roll music that was saturated, you know, marketed to kids in the late ’50s. Equally, I wanted to be a big movie actor.”

He continued, “I found my way into these very personalized movies. For [Dylan], it was folk music. He couldn’t keep a rock ‘n’ roll band because they would all get hired by other kids that had more money, literally, in Minnesota. So for me, it was finding a very personal style movie — Call Me By Your Name or Beautiful Boy or Lady Bird or Little Women, Miss Stevens, Hot Summer Nights. Those were smaller budget but very… I don’t know how else to put it… personable movies that started in this theater space. This is where I found my rhythm, my confidence, my flow, whatever you want to call it.”

A Complete Unknown hits theaters on Christmas Day.