“I had to direct Timothée — and I had to direct his haircut,” Dune director Denis Villeneuve joked in September at a Venice Film Festival press conference. It’s funny because it’s true: Timothée Chalamet’s halo of curls is an entity unto itself. And while it’s certainly part of his appeal as an actor (who wouldn’t want to stare at that for two hours?), the lustrous mop is also its own cultural phenomenon.  

Off-screen and on, the actor isn’t afraid to take aesthetic risks (remember when he wore a harness to the Golden Globes?), and he often uses his hair to bolster narratives and subvert expectations. Case in point: Don’t Look Up, a movie in which Chalamet sports a long, unevenly shaggy mullet wig crowned with a backwards baseball cap. He plays Yule, a scruffy, disaffected youth who meets protagonist Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) in a liquor store after she’s been discredited and silenced for trying to warn the world about a deadly comet headed for Earth. The two hit it off, and Yule ends up playing a significant role in the film, revealing his earnest core cushioned underneath that sk8rboy exterior. It’s not at all what you’d expect from the character — and that’s the point. 

But Chalamet isn’t the only actor in Adam McKay’s new movie to sport some truly weird hair — far from it. Lawrence is transformed into a red-headed version of Lisbeth Salander, while Leonardo DiCaprio gets a goatee that can only be described as rude. Don’t Look Up is a powerful tribute to the magic of hair and makeup to transform attractive Hollywood A-listers into normies. And yet, it’s Chalamet who has a history of deploying his signature physical attribute in unexpected ways, always to great effect. 

Take Chalamet’s most memorable hair upset: the infamous bowl cut from David Michod’s 2019 movie The King. At the beginning of the film, he’s still Hal, the young prince of England more concerned with the pursuit of pleasure in wine and women than with ruling. Chalamet’s hair, longish and loose, reflects his character’s idleness. But once his father dies, leaving him on the throne and with some truly brave hair, the now King Henry V of England sports shorn locks that symbolize his transition into manhood. Suddenly, he’s all razor-sharp cheekbones and iron will. 

“Even Timothée was worried," The King's makeup and hair designer Alessandro Bertolazzi told Refinery29 in 2019. "He was terrified. It was really scary. But he was perfect for the character — [the cut] was perfect. He was different [after the haircut]. He became a king for real. It was cool." 

In Call Me by Your Name, Elio’s soft and messy feelings are reflected in Chalamet’s thick, untameable, glossy curls. And as Zeffirelli in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, those same curls lose their sheen and are teased so high that they challenge gravity, mimicking the character’s commitment to the higher ideals that spurred the Parisian student protests of May 1968. 

Looking ahead, we’re a little nervous about what Chalamet’s latest bright red hair might mean for his turn in the upcoming Luca Guadagnino cannibal movie Bones and All, but we’re also excited to see how the look will further define the softboy look he’s perfected. After all, in Timmy’s curls we trust.