The rapper Timothée Chalamet credits for his entire acting career
Timothée Chalamet has claimed that he wouldn’t have a career in acting if it wasn’t for one of his favourite artists of all time. The 28-year-old, who is the star of many of the biggest movies of today, went from being a fan of a particular artist to calling him one of his closest friends.
During a television appearance in 2019, the lead of the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, credited Kid Cudi as the reason for taking his career path. “Kid Cudi is my favourite artist ever,” he said. “I wouldn’t be acting without him; I wouldn’t have pursued this crazy career.”
Chalamet made the revelation on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, telling a story about meeting Kanye West for the first time at Cudi’s birthday party alongside Pete Davidson, which he called an “awesome but surreal” experience. Cudi and Chalamet have remained great friends over the years between hanging out in their spare time and hitting up red carpets together. The pair met when the actor was just a teenager wanting to meet his hero.
“I met Timothée when he was 17 in Montreal,” Cudi told Esquire. “I had a show out there and I got a call, ‘Hey, there’s a young actor who’s a big fan.’ We hung out for a couple of hours, you know, listened to music, just chilled. He kinda expressed to me some of his concerns about acting, and I just tried to be big bro for him.” He continued, “People like Timothée, Jaden [Smith], these are the little brothers I always wish I had, and I get a chance to kinda have that experience, being the big bro and looking after them. To this day, Timothée says I’m responsible for his acting career. And I just be like, ‘You crazy. You a crazy motherfucker for saying that.’ Like, ‘What are you talking about? Come on, bro. Come on.'”
Not only are Chalamet and Cudi pals, but they’ve also starred in the same movies and TV shows as each other. The pair first crossed paths with Chalamet’s appearance in the Amazon Prime Video documentary A Man Named Scott. From there, they both starred in the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, before Cudi recruited Chalamet for his animated Netflix series Entergalactic.
“It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was gonna be. I talked to him a couple of times about [Entergalactic] before any of the business deals were done,” Cudi told Buzzfeed. “I was like, ‘You know, I would love for you to be in this, man.’ He was like, ‘No problem, for sure.’ I was thinking, ‘He’s probably just saying this now because I’m in his face and I’m asking him.’ He was one of the first people that signed on.”
He added, “One thing that I do understand is that whether me and Timmy are friends or not, he’s not about to do some shit just because. So it needed to be dope. And it needed to be something that made sense for him to do. After he read the script, he said, ‘Yo, this is fire. I fuck with this.’ I was relieved. I was like, ‘OK, he truly fucks with this.'”
It was rumoured that Cudi and Chalamet had fallen out in 2023 after the rapper unfollowed him on Instagram. This led to theories that it was related to Chalamet’s relationship with Kylie Jenner, with Cudi also being friends with her ex, Travis Scott. However, Cudi quickly shot down all the chatter.
“What da hell I literally just shouted him out in ‘Most Ain’t Dennis,'” he wrote on X. “I spoke to him a few weeks ago. Timmy is my brother til the end of time and beyond I will always ALWAYS love him. We are good. Trust me. Idk where this is comin from but please dont believe the gossip online yall.”