Timothée Chalamet has revealed that he was given a fine for riding a Lime Bike to the UK premiere of A Complete Unknown.
Taking place on Tuesday (January 14), the actor turned heads at the event at the BFI for his unconventional mode of transport. The star, who portrays Bob Dylan in the biopic, arrived at the premiere on a green Lime e-bike, riding it onto the red carpet.
Once he arrived, Chalamet got off the bike and ended his ride using his mobile phone. He then got back on the bike again for a couple more photos at the request of the media.
Now, in a recent interview, the star has revealed both why he chose to arrive in that way and how he faced a fine shortly afterwards. Promoting the biopic on the French talk show Quotidien (as per Variety), he recalled how a failure to park the bike properly led to him being charged £60 by the government.
When asked why he chose to arrive via the e-bike, he replied: “It’s ecological!”, before later admitting that it was a last-minute decision as he was stuck in traffic on his way to the premiere. He swapped from a car to a bike in the hopes of making it to the event on time.
This isn’t the first time that Chalamet has gone viral with his promotion for A Complete Unknown. As highlighted by Variety, the actor also made the rounds on social media after co-hosting ESPN’s College Game Day and recreating some of Bob Dylan’s most memorable looks.
The film is set to hit cinemas tomorrow (January 17) in the UK, and to mark the release, NME has launched a special print edition magazine celebrating the film and the legacy of Dylan. The 26-page one-shot is available now – find out where to get it here.
NME awarded A Complete Unknown a four-star review, writing: “The most important (and often trickiest) job of any music movie is to get the music right. And this nails that. If you’re a Bob newbie, you’ll leave the cinema ready to dive into his back catalogue. If you’re already a fan, the next few weeks will be spent making playlists of lesser-known B-sides or reading the lore around a scene you weren’t familiar with. And that’s why it was a good idea to make this film – a mad idea, but a good one.”
Dylan has been involved in the making of the film too. Both meeting with director Jim Mangold to help develop the script and hailing Chalamet as a “brilliant actor”.
Chalamet recently spoke to NME about his preparation for the role and recalled the extensive amount of time he put into getting the character right. “I had the time to put the 10,000 hours in,” he said. “There wasn’t a deadline on it. I wasn’t learning for anyone else. I was learning for myself.”
“Someone said the other day that [Dylan] was ‘someone who doesn’t give a fuck about other people’,” he added of the iconic singer-songwriter. “I don’t think it’s that. He was concerned about his art, and never pretended not to be.”
