It's a big night for Timothée Chalamet as he has been nominated in the Best Actor category at this year's Academy Awards for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.
It's the 29-year-old's second Oscars nomination following his breakthrough role as Elio Perlman in the 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama Call Me by Your Name. His depiction marked the start of a meteoric rise for the New York-born actor, who is now considered box office gold with titles including Wonka and Dune under his belt.
But Timothée is by no means the only talented star in his family. His older sister Pauline Chamalet, 33, has starred in Mindy Kaling's HBO comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls since 2021, and she has also turned her hand to producing having co-founded the production company Gummy Films in 2020.
Their parents also have an artistic flair. Both Pauline and Timothée were born in New York to Nicole Flender and Marc Chalamet: Pauline in January 1992 and her brother in December 1995.
Dad Marc is from Nîmes, France, while Nicole is originally from New York (a third-generation New Yorker), where they first met, and both of their children are bilingual. Speaking about his parents to RSNG, Timothée previously shared: "My father was on a business trip to New York while he was working as a journalist for Le Parisien, the French newspaper.
"Now, he works at the United Nations. My mother was a dancer when she met my father, and now she's working in real estate." Marc reportedly still works as an editor for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
Nicole, meanwhile, works for premier real estate company The Corcoran Group, but prior to that earned her bachelor's degree in French from Yale University, where she also studied musical theatre. She has also worked with the Actors' Equity Association, the labour union representing those who work in live theatrical performances, for 40 years.
Timothée and Pauline had an unconventional childhood. They grew up in the federally subsidised artists' building Manhattan Plaza in Hell's Kitchen, which is part of the Mitchell–Lama program, and where fellow artists such as Alicia Keys, Tennessee Williams, and Larry David also lived. The apartment complex has been dubbed "Broadway's Bedroom," with 70% of the building's 1,689 units occupied by performing artists.
In 2022, Pauline told The Sydney Morning Herald : "The building imposed rehearsal hours where you were allowed to practice piano or, like, my parents had this board we kept under the living room couch that they’d take out when I wanted to tap dance." Given their upbringing, it is no surprise that both Timothée and Pauline have ended up as actors - and they remain incredibly close.
Pauline told Vanity Fair in 2021 that she is "in awe of" her brother's work and noted that Timothée "has come to almost every screening of a short film I've written or directed or acted in". She also told the publication that their individual successes have not affected their relationship.
"It has nothing to do with either of us. He didn't choose that. I didn't choose him as a brother; he didn't choose me as a sister," Pauline said. "So it feels normal, but because it doesn't impact our lives at all. It doesn't impact our relationship."
Timothée made his acting debut in a 2009 episode of Law & Order, while Pauline made her film debut in Judd Apatow's The King of Staten Island in 2020 before finding fame as Kimberly on The Sex Lives of College Girls. Nevertheless, Pauline wasn’t always certain that she wanted to be an actress. "I did and I didn't. I went about it in many different ways," she said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "I had a long path to getting where I am."
A woman of many talents, Pauline can also sing and play the piano. In 2020, she posted a video of herself singing a song in Italian.
"It came to me from my childhood and probably started with musicals," she told L’Officiel in 2021 of her passion for music. "Because in fact, when you go to see a musical, there are the scenes that are acted and then, it's like there's a point when acting and speaking are no longer enough and you have to go through singing to communicate with the person in front, and that, I liked. That was a bit of my discovery of music."
Today, Pauline lives mainly in Paris - although she also spends much time travelling between New York and Los Angeles. And in September 2024, she welcomed her first baby, a little girl, with director Rhys Raiskin.
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