Timothée Chalamet scored the second Oscar nomination of his young career this week, and he’s a favorite to take home the trophy. In many ways, his work as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown is classic Oscars fare: an Academy darling who donned prosthetics and learned how to play the guitar for his turn as a musical icon. Yet all the same, as Chalamet campaigns assiduously for the trophy, the publicity offense he’s mounting doesn’t look quite like traditional Oscars campaigns do.

Chalamet has always had a flair for the quirky, and now he’s playing it up. He rode a bike onto the red carpet for the London premiere of A Complete Unknown and got fined $79.53 for not parking it correctly. In December, he guested on the popular pre-game football show College GameDay to deliver analysis that I, a woman who writes about celebrities for a living, shall not pretend to understand but that I am reliably informed showcased shocking levels of football nerdery. This weekend, he will take a turn as both the host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live, and the promos wink at the viral Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest held in Washington Square Park last fall, where he shocked attendees by showing up in person.

“Timothée, undeniably the top actor of his generation, and the youngest contender in the Best Actor field this season, isn’t subscribing to the usual Oscar playbook and navigating the circuit with the seriousness and maturity of someone a decade older than he is just so some old ass voter in Palm Springs will take him seriously,” wrote celebrity commenter Lainey Gossip approvingly after the Golden Globes. “Because his work is already serious. His talent is already serious. That’s all that should matter and the rest of it is just who he is.”

Chalamet has risen to the top of the A-list of his generation in part by being able to reconcile opposites with seeming ease.

The whimsy of Chalamet’s press tour doesn’t only work because of the seriousness of his talent and the leeway it’s bought him. It’s also a showcase for one of his greatest strengths as a celebrity: his ability to embody dualities.

We tend to like movie stars who can embody both sides of a paradox at once, the way Marilyn........

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