Timothée Chalamet has offered to pay the fine incurred by the viral lookalike contest that he turned up at himself.
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In October, the Dune and Wonka star made an appearance at his own lookalike competition in Washington Square Park in downtown Manhattan, sneaking into the group under cover before revealing his identity.
The event attracted nearly 900 people and quickly became a social media hit, but it has now emerged that the contest’s organiser Anthony Po received a fine for hosting a public event without a permit.
Timothée Chalamet making a surprise appearance at his look-alike contest in NYC. pic.twitter.com/z5hdXTVfpN
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) October 27, 2024
New York police turned people away and ultimately issued a $500 (£395) to Po, and as he has now revealed to People, Chalamet offered to pay the fine himself.
Po explained that the actor’s representatives got in touch with him in the days following the event. “They offered to pay the ticket, which is truly funny,” Po said.
He went on to clarify that he turned down Chalamet’s offer, with the digital invite app Partiful putting up the money instead.
“The production [cost] like $4,000, so it’s like legit the best case scenario,” Po continued. “They need to do something stronger to [disincentivize] us.”
Chalamet appears to have started something of a trend, with Paul Mescal FaceTiming the winner of a lookalike contest for him last month, and Glen Powell sending a video message to one of his that took place in Austin a few weeks later.
Chalamet is about to star as Bob Dylan in the biopic A Complete Unknown, which charts the music legend’s controversial switch from acoustic to electric guitar in the mid-’60s. The film is released in the US on December 25 and in the UK on January 17.
Chalamet stars alongside Edward Norton (Pete Seeger) and Elle Fanning (Sylvie Russo, a fictionalised version of Dylan’s first New York girlfriend Suze Rotolo, who died in 2011) in the film which is based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, And The Night That Split The Sixties.
Early reactions to the film have hailed Chalamet, who learned to play 30 songs in preparation for the film, as delivering “the performance of the year”.
To celebrate the film, a number of specially designed posters inspired by Dylan’s most beloved songs have been created, which you can check out exclusively on NME.
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