While I correctly predicted Adrien Brody to win Best Actor in my 2025 Oscar predictions, as I said in the post if I had a vote I would have cast it for Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. The best evidence to see why is to watch A Complete Unknown now on Hulu (coming to Disney Plus in the UK), as the streamer adds the eight-time Oscar-nominated movie to its lineup, but I’ll make my case here.
A Complete Unknown is a biopic about music legend Bob Dylan, played by Chalamet, in his early years, as he anonymously arrives in New York (a complete unknown, if you will) and soon begins to rise up in the ranks of the folk music scene with the mentorship of Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) and alongside Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). However, as Dylan’s fame continues to rise, he fights back against evolving as a musician, challenging the folk community that made him a star.
Music biopics aren’t anything new. In the last 20 or so years we’ve seen the likes of Ray, Walk the Line (which was also directed by A Complete Unknown director James Mangold), Straight Outta Compton, Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody. We even got a previous Bob Dylan movie, I’m Not There, though that wasn’t as much in the traditional style of the standard music biopic.
Yet outside of Jamie Foxx’s performance as Ray Charles in Ray, I haven’t seen a performer embody one of these iconic musicians the way that Chalamet did with Dylan here.
It’s more than just imitation, though Chalemet does an excellent job mimicking Dylan’s signature raspy voice. Look at any of Chalamet’s other performances and then watch him as Dylan. While there’s no makeup trick to hide his well known face, Chalamet got absorbed in the role where his real persona seems completely gone. That may be the goal of every actor, but it is no easy feat to pull off.
I’m not trying to slight Brody’s performance in The Brutalist. He was very good in the role, well deserving of a nomination and clearly in the view of many deserving of the win. It was also nice to see the Academy award an actor portraying a fictional character, as they have had a penchant for honoring actors playing real people lately (14 of the 25 Best Actor Oscars this century were given to performers playing real people). But I do believe that Chalamet’s performance was good enough to be included in that bunch.
Chalamet only won one of the major Best Actor trophies in the lead up to the Oscars, the SAG Award. In his acceptance speech he said that he wants to be considered one of the greats to ever act on the big screen. Few would argue he is certainly on his way toward that, with his performance as Bob Dylan a notch in his favor.
You don’t need an Oscar to be considered one of the greats, but it doesn’t hurt. Chalamet will likely have many more chances to earn an Oscar in his career, though if it were up to me he’d already have one on his mantle.
Get a taste of it by watching the trailer for A Complete Unknown directly below:
To watch A Complete Unknown on Hulu you need a subscription to the streaming service, available as a standalone service, as part of Hulu with Live TV or can be bundled with Disney Plus. If you don’t have access to Hulu, A Complete Unknown is available to buy or rent via digital on-demand.
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