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Becoming Bob Dylan

Actor Timothée Chalamet spent five years perfecting his guitar, harmonica
and singing skills to transform into the music legend he calls 'very inspiring'.

By Julie Jordan in People

irector James Mangold had high hopes that Timotheé Chalamet could portray music legend Bob Dylan in his film A Complete Unknown. But it wasn't until the first shot the actor singing live while playing guitar that Mangold knew Chalamet had pulled it off. "He was phenomenal," recalls Mangold, who also directed the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. "And I remember being elated and this kind of weight lifting from my chest, knowing my instincts were right, and this young man was going to be awesome."

Set in New York in the early '60s, the film spans four years of Dylan's life, as the 19-year-old from Minnesota becomes one of the most iconic singer-songwriters in history. While Chalamet, 29, has admitted he knew very little about the musician before taking on the role, he threw himself into prep work, including mastering both the guitar and harmonica during five years of production delays because of COVID-19 and industry strikes. The time also allowed him to work with a voice coach while studying Dylan's performances and his interviews to nail his posture and how that affected his tone. "The whole thing was really just a sort of magical experience," Chalamet says. "I don't want to ruin it with words because, really, it's deeply personal to me. Just being in that time period was awesome, and living that." Chalamet, who along with Mangold was awarded a special Visionary Tribute at the 2024 Gotham Independent Film Awards on Dec. 2 for their work on the film, praised Dylan as being "true to his art." "And as people who are not musicians but doing it in a similar sense, it's very inspiring."

To capture Dylan's unique appearance, the hair-and-makeup crew focused on three looks: the kid who moves to New York, young Bob once he got a recording deal and the more renowned musician with big hair and Ray-Bans. Along with more than 60 wardrobe changes reflecting the times, Chalamet opted to wear a subtle nose prosthetic and various sideburn lengths to demonstrate the passage of time. Other small details included Dylan's inconsistent shaving, dark shadows under his eyes and his longer and at times dirty fingernails.

On-set, Chalamet remained focused. "If he wasn't working, he'd be going back to his trailer and playing guitar and working on whatever next song he has coming up," says Mangold. "I mean, a pleasure and gracious with everyone, but focused, he's got a job to do, and it's a scary job. Meaning, he and I were more than aware that there's an awful lot of Bob fans out there who would have their knives sharpened for someone who doesn't meet their expectations. And he knew he had to meet his own very high expectations." Mangold adds Chalamet was the consummate professional when taking direction. "You don't have to say much. If you're giving him a note or an adjustment, he understands you very fast. He's kind of a wonder."

Edward Norton, who portrays folk legend Pete Seeger, was impressed with Chalamet's dedication. "From day one, Timothée was so switched on," he says. "I was completely knocked out by the depth fo his seriousness and absorption into this." The actor also supported Chalamet's hesitancy to disclose details about the transformation. "People came at him and said, 'Oh, let's shoot a time-lapse of you transforming into Bob Dylan for social. They want to see behind the scenes.' And he said, 'Absolutely not.'" Norton says, "He was so mature and so disciplined about keeping the bubble around the entirety of that magic trick."

As for Dylan, 83, he posted support for the film Dec. 4 on X, calling Chalamet "a brilliant actor" and adding, "I'm sure he's going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me." While Chalamet says he hasn't had direct contact with the musician, he calls Dylan's words "beyond my wildest dreams. And it was more than enough. I'm very grateful for that."  

Elton John: 2024 Music Icon Of The Year

Excerpts from Time magazine's 'Music Icon of the Year'.

By Belinda Luscombe in Time

lton John has no address. Visitors to his home are given three names: the name of a house, the name of a hill, and the name of a town, which is near Windsor, as in Windsor Castle, where King Charles III lives.

Admission is granted via a big iron gate that swings silently open to a crunchy driveway, a small turreted gatehouse, a pond with geese, hedgerows, wordless men with wheelbarrows and Wellingtons and, after a little walking, a three-story red-brick Georgian compound. From the outside it has the stately but understated air commonly associated with English gentry. One of the property's chief treasures is a really old oak tree.

This is not the Elton John most people know. That guy is loud. The glasses, the outfits, the sexuality, the concerts, the retail expenditure, the platform heels, the temper, the parties, and most of all the piano -- all set permanently at fortissimo. John has been in showbiz for 60 years, and for 50 of those he has been a front man, inordinately and excessively famous. His triumphs, mistakes, strengths, weaknesses, wigs, and duck costumes have been in full and permanent plumage. The wealth and passions he became known for have not been those associated with aristocracy: they leaned more toward shopping than Chopin.

But these days the comparison to an English noble feels weirdly apt. John's married with two heirs. His philanthropic work is much admired. Some of his possessions -- a selection from his impressive photograph collection -- are currently on display at one of London's most highly regarded art institutions, the Victoria and Albert Museum. His library is full of trophies that attest to his prowess, an Emmy and multiple other awards crowded together on a small table with some ancient sculpture fragments. He has literally been knighted. From his garden, the current King's grandmother once remarked, you get a good view of the British monarchy's ancestral home.

John has owned Woodside, as the house is known, for nearly 50 years, but until the pandemic he did not spend much time in it. Most of his life was spent in hotel rooms, while he toured. Like many nobles, he found laundry an unfamiliar task. "It was the most embarrassing thing in my life when I went into [drug] treatment that I couldn't work a washing machine," says John during our first interview , conducted in a New York City hotel room in November, while his husband David Furnish lies on the bed and two publicists wait in the bathroom. "I though, 'F-ck. Here you are at 43 years of age, and you can't work a washing machine. That shows you how you're f-cked up.'"

More than three decades later, at 77, he is doing much more than still standing in front of the top loader. Right now, he's dealing with damage to his right eye, which was previously the good one, that has rendered him almost blind, but you wouldn't know it to meet him. The candle that is Elton John has been inextinguishable, no matter how strong the wind. His 57 U.S. Top 40 hits were mostly released during his wild-child youth, but he found a second act in writing songs for animated Disney movies, for which he won two Oscars, and a third in writing songs for Broadway musicals, for which he won a Tony. There's a whiff of a fourth act about him as he moves into the mash-up phase of his career, lending his melodies -- and some vocals -- to a new generation of performers. It has been a mere 16 months since he had his last hit single, a collaboration with Britney Spears, who hadn't recorded music for five years.

This kind of longevity requires not just prodigious musical dexterity, and phenomenal luck, but stamina. Few can keep up with fame's sugar-daddy demands for long enough to get to the settling-down phase with their sanity, health, and friends and family intact. "When you're famous, there's like a court around you," says John. "People are vying for position, and the nearer you are to me, the more people will get jealous."

He has bested or evaded the four horsemen that cut down his generation's boldest names: drug addiction, AIDS, irrelevance, and suicide. Apart from Paul McCartney, who had a Top 10 single with a resurrected Beatles song in 2023, very few of John's contemporaries are still alive, let alone releasing new hits. The Rolling Stones still tour, but their last No. 1 was 40 years ago. John has also survived deep family dysfunction, tabloid fabrication, early hair loss, bulimia, and in the '80s, a brief marriage to a woman. And here's the key part: he has remained prolific.

Having performed 4,500-something concerts over half a century, he retired from touring at the end of 2023, but not from cultural output. Elton John: Never Too Late, the most recent documentary on his life, which compares his meteoric first five years of touring the U.S. with the final tour that ended in July 2023, is now on Disney+. He has written the music for and co-produced two new musicals: "Tammy Faye" and "The Devil Wears Prada." An auction of some of his many belongings in February brought in more than $20 million, twice the presale estimate. He has a podcast/radio show, Rocket Hour, which promotes young musicians. This year the 52-year-old song "Rocket Man" hit a billion streams on Spotify, while "Cold Heart," a 2021 track with Dua Lipa, drew a million listeners a day. "When Elton and David called me about the collaboration, for me, it was because of our friendship," says Lipa. "And of course, singing alongside one of my musical heroes was a no-brainer. His music has been able to soundtrack my life from the very beginning."

John's outrageous string of hits is now a list of global standards. "Do you know how many requests I get a day for the use of our songs on things like America's Got Talent, The Voice, or the silly show were they dress up as poodles?" says Bernie Taupin, John's longtime writing partner, who has provided the lyrics to most of his hits. "I don't think Bob Dylan gets a lot of requests for The Masked Singer."

  

n person the glam-rock superstar is gentle, a little shy, and eager to please, and especially eager to make people laugh. While some frailties are apparent, he still has plenty of bounce. He favors comfy designer tracksuits and sneakers. He doesn't hear too well or walk with confidence. Corrective surgery a few years back made the glasses a mostly cosmetic choice, but a recent eye infection damaged the optic nerve in his right eye and it's taking a while to heal. His husband is determined to be optimistic about it. "I just think it's just gonna take time, right?" Furnish says.

John was one of the earliest celebrities to come out, in 1976, initially saying he was bisexual, when an admission was deeply hazardous career-wise. After 31 years together, John and Furnish, who formerly worked in advertising, take their gay-icon status very seriously. They formed a civil partnership in December 2005, within weeks of it becoming legal to do so, and were married on the same day nine years later after the U.K.'s same-sex marriage laws were passed.

Unlike many celebrity parents, they are sending their boys, Zachary, 13, and Elijah, 11, to school locally, although Zachary just started boarding school. "We deliberately didn't homeschool our children because we want them to be their own people and to define life as they want to be defined," says Furnish, who is husband, helpmeet, and manager. He's the CEO of Rocket Entertainment, is listed as executive producer on the musicals, and is the co-director of the new documentary, which he brought to R.J. Cutler, who has also helmed docs about Martha Stewart and Billie Eilish.

Fatherhood, marriage, and sobriety have mellowed the superstar. As has self-knowledge. "I will flare up if I'm tired, if I'm exhausted, if I'm overwhelmed," says John. "I don't like having that temperament, but it's all usually done and dusted within five or 10 minutes." But impatience is also part of his gift, it seems. He likes to write fast -- if he can't get a tune for the lyrics he's given in an hour or so, he moves on to new ones. "I know people think, 'Oh, God, he doesn't work that hard," says John. "But it's really effortless. If a get a lyric and I look at it, the song comes straight out."

Taupin wrote "Your Song," the duo's most commercially successful tune, over breakfast when he was 19 and living with John's family, sleeping in bunk bed in John's room. He guesses it took his roommate half an hour to create music for it. "We have a telepathy between the two of us," says John of Taupin. "He seems to know what I want, and I seem to know what he wants. It's really unusual and it's spooky."

In some of rock 'n' roll's most formative years, 1970 to 1975, John released 13 albums, seven of which went platinum. He was the first artist ever to have an album debut at No. 1 on the American charts and is the only one ever to have had a Top 10 single in each of the past six decades. Even today, John's songs are inescapable -- they're at every party, in every restaurant, in every airport, on every hold for an agent, at every karaoke night. Spears cited him as her favorite artist even before their duet gave her an unexpected hit song. As well as being a guru for young performers, John has restored the careers of older musicians who had lost faith in themselves. His work with John Lennon gave the Beatles legend a No. 1 hit. And he rescued one of his idols, Leon Russell, from obscurity with an album they made together in 2011.

For Taupin, John's enduring relevance is a validation. "What people didn't realize in the '70s and '80s and '90s, but I think they realize now, is that he's one of the best f-cking piano players on the planet," he says. "There are a lot of people that have great catalogs and great songs, but I don't think anybody of our peers has songs that are so varied." Cutler, the documentary's other co-director, calls him "Mozartian in his prodigious gifts." In his youth, Cutler forged multiple record vouchers to win a ticket to John's 1974 concert at Madison Square Garden. "It comes out of him," says Cutler, trying to describe John's artistry. "It emanates from him, like it's a gift from the heavens."

  

erhaps it's age or his relationship with Furnish (or distance from his mother, who disapproved of Furnish and died in 2017), but he has grown slightly more comfortable with himself. Slightly. His distaste for being on video, for instance, persists. "Music videos should be made by good-looking people like Harry Styles," says John. "I'm not very good at looking at myself. I don't think you ever lose that body consciousness. I just think it stays with you forever. But I am much better." He especially dislikes TV and has turned down invitations to be a judge on the TV talent shows that request his music so often. "Being on TV all the time kills your career, kills your vibe, kills your charisma totally," he says.

He would prefer to spend his time discovering. "I've never lost the excitement of buying a new record, a new book, a new photograph," he says, noting that if he had to choose between never playing music again and never listening to it again, he'd opt to keep listening. "I just think that's kept me going," he says. But he is beginning to to think about what lies beyond. "I don't really believe in the biblical God too much, but I have faith," says John. "My higher power has been looking after me all my life; he's got me through drugs, he's got me through depression, he's got me through loneliness, and he got me sober. He's been there all the time, I think. I just didn't acknowledge him."

Like many megastars, John feels that he was somehow chosen to be as famous as he is, because he could withstand the burdens it it brings. Asked if he'd wish his talent on his sons, if it also came with the drawbacks of stardom, he offers an emphatic no. "I've lived an incredible life, but it's been a hell of a life, and it's been a slog," he says. "I wouldn't want that amount of pressure on them." Icon status is great, but as he learned over his many decades in the spotlight, there's more to life than rock 'n' roll. "If people remember that we tried to change the world a little bit, we were kind, we tried to help people," that would be enough of a legacy for him, says John. "And then, apart from that, there was the music."  

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