Last night, at the London premiere of A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet defied convention by turning up on a Lime bike. He rode the bike on to the red carpet, ended the ride on his phone and then carried on with the rest of the premiere as if nothing had happened. What a man.
You can tell a lot about someone by the way in which they arrive at their own film premiere. The default is to arrive in a limo, looking beautiful with someone of equal beauty in tow, as a demonstration of status. Sometimes a star will bring their mother as a date – as Henry Cavill did to the premiere of The Witcher a few years ago – when they want to project an image of cosy, relatable approachability. Then there are those who will lean into the premiere as an opportunity to redefine their own personal brand, as Ryan Gosling did when he turned up to The Fall Guy’s premiere last year dressed as one of Beavis and Butt-Head.
One extreme is to do what Tom Cruise did before the Mission: Impossible 3 premiere in 2006, which was to move across New York City as extravagantly as possible, first on a motorbike, then a speedboat, then a taxi, then a helicopter, then a sports car and then finally the subway. But not even Cruise in his pomp could pull off what Chalamet did, by hiring a publicly accessible ebike.
Of course, questions remain. It’s hard to say how far he travelled to the premiere at the BFI Southbank. Did he hop on around the corner to soak up the glory, or did he do the work and make his entire journey by bike? That would be the correct way to do it, for it shows that Chalamet understands the city he is in. He wants to navigate London’s sprawling nest of streets quickly and cheaply without causing too much strain on the environment, so of course he’d hire a bike.
It would also demonstrate that Chalamet is one of us. Not exactly one of us – who among us can say that we have crashed our own lookalike competition? – but close enough. It shows he doesn’t need a huge entourage to get him to where he needs to be and he has enough competence and street smarts to get things done on his own. If this is the case, Chalamet will go down in history as the most relatable A-lister of all time.
However, there are a few telltale signs that this was merely a stunt. For starters, he arrived on time instead of being 20 minutes late because he struggled to find a bike in working condition. The bottom of his trousers were also immaculate, rather than being coated in a fine sheen of drizzle, wet cabbage and urine.
Most tellingly of all, Chalamet looked completely unflappable as he arrived. Had he ridden the bike for any meaningful distance, he would have carried a look of exasperated fury at having to deal with the unending litany of cars trying to drive into him, other cyclists shooting past him and the swarms of pedestrians who keep wandering obliviously out in front of him because they’re too busy scrolling TikTok to retain even a shred of spacial awareness. Had Chalamet hopped off his bike, dropped it and embarked on a brief but impassioned rant about how much he hates people, then there would be more reason to believe he had made the entire journey by bike.
Chalamet, however, arrived at his premiere after a supposed bike ride through London, looking as though he didn’t hold any lingering resentment for humanity. He’s a good actor, but he’s not that good.
