Meet Timothée Chalamet and Ansel Elgort’s High-School Drama Teacher, Mr. Shifman
VANITY FAIR – A chat about high-school musical auditions, awards-season madness, and why Chalamet almost didn’t get into the prestigious LaGuardia High.
Timothée Chalamet and Ansel Elgort, 22 and 23, respectively, are both having what their generational cohort might refer to as “#blessed” starts to their careers. Both native New Yorkers, the two actors were each nominated for a best-actor Golden Globe award this year, Chalamet for his turn as a lovesick teenager in Call Me by Your Name, and Elgort for his performance as the titular “Baby” in last summer’s Baby Driver. Chalamet is also widely predicted to get an Oscar nomination for his performance when the nods are announced January 23.
The two both attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, located near Lincoln Center—a school known as something of an incubator for standout artists in a variety of fields. (Jennifer Aniston, Nicki Minaj, and Sarah Paulson are among the notable alums.) In December, Elgort—a passionate New York Knicks fan—posted an Instagram from Madison Square Garden featuring himself and Chalamet courtside, with this caption: “Laguardia high school pride. It’s really crazy, Timmy and I played on the same basketball team, we had the same drama teacher Mr. Shifman, we had the same science teacher Mr.Singh, and then in the same year, both of us are nominated for a f$&king Golden Globe!!! Living the dream sitting courtside at the Knicks game together. Life is crazy.” (MTV recently asked both actors which of the two was more popular in high school, and they each answered with the other’s name.)
“Mr. Shifman” (first name: Harry) has been teaching drama at LaGuardia for 26 years. He refers to himself as a “generalist,” but explains that “mostly, [he is] a director”; he oversees the school-wide musical each year, for which anywhere from 350 to 500 students audition, with about 35 to 45 getting cast. (Elgort got his first role in the musical his freshman year.) Vanity Fair gave Shifman a call to discuss what Elgort and Chalamet were like as high-school students, why Chalamet almost didn’t get into the high school in the first place, and who he remembers as the most popular.
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Meet Timothée’s High-School Drama Teacher
Timothée Chalamet Is Having a Very Big Year
Call Me by Your Name’s Timothée Chalamet Is Having a Very Big Year
VOGUE – André Aciman’s novel Call Me by Your Name tells the story of Elio, a musically inclined Italian-American/French teenager, and Oliver, a rakish graduate student visiting Elio’s family’s home. Elio’s initial annoyance with his houseguest gives way to curiosity, then cryptic flirtation, and eventually a furtive, passionate affair. The book has been considered a modern classic of queer literature since its publication in 2007, but for Timothée Chalamet, the actor who plays Elio in the new film adaptation, it was also quite an investment. “I got a copy through the library at Columbia,” says the half-French New York City native over coffee in the East Village. “But I forgot to give it back for a year, so it was a $100 read. I still have that copy.”
The atmospheric intensity of the novel was a natural subject for Luca Guadagnino, the I Am Love director and longtime Tilda Swinton collaborator. He cast Armie Hammer opposite Chalamet, enlisted Sufjan Stevens to contribute to the sound track of the film, and relocated the setting to Lombardy. He also allowed Chalamet to integrate some French into the Italian and English script, giving the film a seductive, borderless feel. As Chalamet puts it, “The lingual freedom fed the intellectual foreplay.” (Chalamet looks even younger than his 21 years, but he’s sharper than actors twice his age. “He is exactly what I imagined,” Aciman says of the casting choice. “Lankish, a bit brooding, bookish—the whole thing.”)
Other directors are equally keen to capture “the whole thing”: Chalamet, whose first break was as the bad-news boyfriend on the second season of Homeland, has also landed roles in Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, Lady Bird; Christian Bale’s latest film, Hostiles; and an upcoming Woody Allen project. As we pay the bill, I ask what he’s planning to wear to the Toronto International Film Festival, and he shows me a caramel double-breasted Berluti. I mention he looks like Gianni Agnelli in his 20s. “Who?” Chalamet asks. It’s safe to say he’s still more French than Italian.
