Don’t Look Up confirms Timothée Chalamet won the 2021 movie season. The actor had a pretty great year with regards to his movie roles. In Don’t Look Up, Chalamet appears when least expected and breathes fresh air into the Adam McKay film. Starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, Chalamet made quite an impression as Yule. But the disaster comedy was only the tip of the iceberg, capping off a year that included a variety of different roles for the Little Women actor.
Timothée Chalamet’s feature film debut dates all the way back to 2014’s Men, Women, and Children. He’s since gone on to appear in major films, including Interstellar, Call Me By Your Name, and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. In Don’t Look Up, Chalamet has a scene-stealing role as Yule, who is a big fan of Lawrence’s Kate Dibiasky, a scientist who — along with DiCaprio’s Dr. Randall Mindy — warns the public of an incoming (and world-destroying) comet. Chalamet’s role in Don’t Look Up is relatively smaller in comparison to the film’s other big-name actors, but he does provide a groundedness to all the chaos going on in the story. He’s pretty great in the film and his appearance provided some levity in a darkly comedic plot.
Chalamet’s role in Don’t Look Up also marked the end of a fantastic year for the actor, who has played quite a few memorable roles in major films throughout 2021. Besides McKay’s film, Timothée Chalamet played a notable and decent-sized role in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and had a starring role in Dune. He was one of the best parts of The French Dispatch, playing a young student revolutionary named Zeffirelli opposite Frances McDormand. Denis Villeneuve's Dune was wildly different in tone and saw Chalamet play a more serious and stoic character in Paul Atreides, the main character in the film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel.
The actor didn’t slow down one bit last year and has (sometimes unexpectedly) shown up the surprise and delight of viewers. Even when it’s in a smaller role, like in Don’t Look Up, Timothée Chalamet’s appearances tend to be fun, brightening up whatever movie he’s in. While he’s been making a name for himself in Hollywood for quite some time now, 2021 was most certainly the year when Chalamet's onscreen presence has taken a firmer hold. While it won’t beat the year he had in 2017, with four movies releasing, Chalamet’s 2021 roles had a lot more variety.
In a year that saw a deluge of blockbusters and smaller films clamoring for attention at the box office, Chalamet’s roles in all three films proved his ability to cross over into different genres. What’s more, no other major actor managed to be in as many major films as Chalamet. To be sure, the actor’s roles in Don’t Look Up, The French Dispatch, and Dune served as a reminder of his versatility and ensured he would indeed be remembered by the audience due to the quantity of roles he's had in one year. No other actor appeared in as many major films as Chalamet did in 2021 and his role in the third act of Don’t Look Up rounded out an impressive and dynamic year for the actor that will have many looking forward to what he does next.