Timothée Chalamet’s Top 10 Films, Ranked Only by His Hair

A wise man once said, “Thank God Timothée Chalamet isn’t bald.” It was me and I’m saying it right now. I don’t want to minimize his acting—I truly believe Timothée is one of the most impressive talents of my generation—but I also think he has one of the best heads of hair of my generation. I am holding space for both of these truths and feel they strengthen one another.

But it wasn’t until I saw the thumbnail for the Dune 2 trailer (no, not the trailer itself) that I realized how much I needed to see his hair back on the big screen. That actors strike, while necessary, created a drought. But there is water on the horizon, and it is not a mirage. In the meantime, I think it would be educational to look back at our previous eras, be they boom or bust.

As with any list, not all entries are created equal, so I have taken it upon myself to rank the following appearances by Timmy’s hair in a motion picture. I should stress that this is a very vibes-based ranking, but I do believe I’m right.

Timmy’s hair in Don’t Look Up is bad. This is clearly a deliberate decision—his character is a shoplifting drifter on the eve of the apocalypse—but that doesn’t make it less bad. That said, I know people from my hometown with this cut who wish they could pull it off this well. Kudos to the hair department; you guys really nailed this weird mullet thing.

Rating: 2 out of 10 warnings too late.

A premature evaluation, perhaps, as Wonka has been out in the world for less than 2 weeks, but I look at our brief glimpses, and here’s what I see: hat hair. This chocolatier wears a leather top hat far too often for the hair underneath to be worth much of a second glance. Let’s be fair—it is sanitary, and probably legally mandated for young Willy to cover his hair in the chocolate factory. The health inspector may come for Wonka in due time, but at least in the beginning, he was willing to sacrifice pilar aesthetics for sanitation.

Rating: 2 out of 10 missing children

Now we’re getting into more interesting territory. Set in the mid-1980s, Chalamet plays Lee, another drifter, but one who eats people and is kind of romantic. I don’t actually hate the shape of the cut, and the greasiness makes sense for a character who is more concerned with eating people than bathing. Unfortunately, the grown-out pink dye does give a kind of an MGK vibe, which is a non-starter. Perhaps Lee is a trendsetter, but it is a trend I cannot accept knowing the ramifications for the present day.

Rating: 3 out of 10 Greyhound trips

Beautiful Boy is Chalamet’s Big Serious Movie after the back-to-back bangers of Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird. I haven’t actually seen this one, but the quality of the film is immaterial to what we’re discussing. His hair is perfectly fine here. It feels like the classic Chalamet cut, which is medium-length waves cascading down over his gaunt, doll-like face. Timmy and his stylists clearly know what works for him, and it’s nice, even if it’s been more or less the same-but-better elsewhere.

Rating: 5 out of 19 tears jerked

In The French Dispatch, Chalamet’s character constantly looks like he’s about to stare down Cillian Murphy-as-Oppenheimer for creating the atomic bomb. Maybe he would; his Zefferili is a bit of a student revolutionary. But he clearly hasn’t discovered conditioner, sporting a big mane that looks fried to all hell. But he gets bonus points for a present if unconvincing mustache—love it or hate it, that was a new one for him. And, depending on the day, I lean towards love.

Rating: 5 out of 10 lost zines

This may be a little controversial, but I really like Timmy’s hair in The King, which is another movie I have reason to believe few people watched. Whether this cut is historically accurate or not is of no interest to me—it seems not? Compared to the paintings of the real Henry V, who sports something between a beanie and a bob, it looks pretty hype-beast-y. Regardless, Chalamet’s cut in The King stands out in his filmography for its cropped back and sides. We may not need more of it, but the one we got is solid.

Rating: 6 out of 11 The Kings

The point of the Call Me By Your Name cut is to help make the then-21-year-old Chalamet look more like the 17-year-old Elio. This is a fairly easy task, given that the actor is what Wendy Williams might dub “twink thin,” but the haircut does help. CMBYN isn’t subtle with the Greco-Roman imagery, and Chalamet’s curls are reminiscent of a Greek statue. Not to be problematic, but he looks good in this movie.

Rating: 7 out of 12 Sufjan songs

Now we’re into the good stuff. The actor is usually relegated to one main style per film, but Little Women gives Chalamet some range to work with. There’s a loose, boyish style in the film’s earliest timeline; a roguish, windswept style when Laurie confesses his love to Jo on a Massachusetts hillside; a more polished, adult quaff when Laurie grows to give up on that and instead marry a different March sister. The latter style fashions him into exactly the kind of guy that Amy would want, like a Sandy of a 19th-century Grease.

Rating: 8 out of 10 Massachusetts tax write-offs

Timmy’s Kyle in Lady Bird is a 17-year-old, bass-playing, natural-cigarette-smoking, Howard Zinn-reading haircut that grew a person underneath. It’s a dutifully tousled style, one that sometimes functions as a literal mask for Kyle to hide behind. It’s the classic, “This guy is sensitive. Oh, he’s kind of a dick. Well, he has problems too. But he could still be less of a dick.” I’m only a little embarrassed to say that I, at my big age, am regularly trying to get my hair to look like a fictional high school student in 2002.

Rating: 9 out of 10 tally marks on a bedroom wall

When I told people I was writing this list, pretty much everyone asked if Dune was going to be number one. I already knew it would be, but being on the same wavelength in that way was validating. The denizens of Duniverse have clearly discovered conditioner, leaving Chalamet’s hair clean and wavy in the dry desert air. They may need stillsuits to preserve the moisture from their bodies, but they seem to be reinvesting that moisture into their duke’s head. And you know what? Worth it.

Rating: 100 out of 100 sandworms