During the Golden Globes at the Beverly Hilton ballroom, there was a palpable sense of distress when the cameras captured actor Timothee Chalamet enjoying a ‘date night’ with his girlfriend Kylie Jenner.
Chalamet, aged 29, earned a nomination for best actor for his role as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. Despite having 19.5 million followers on Instagram, compared to Jenner’s 395 million, the public reaction following their rare public appearance was overwhelming.
Many fans expressed disbelief that Chalamet, often seen as a delicate heartthrob, was romantically involved with a member of the Kardashian family, known to some as a symbol of vulgarity.
Despite semi-regular sightings in the two years they have been dating, the ‘Chalamaniacs’, as they’re known, have clung to the belief that the romance is a PR stunt, or that it was already over.
As recently as last week the couple were said to have broken up (although at the same time a rumour was circulating that Jenner was pregnant).
As one fan sighed: ‘I always assumed he was more highbrow than to hook up with someone from that wretched clan, but I stand corrected.’ Another simply said: ‘I curse Timothee Chalamet.’
A third suggested he might be mentally ill. Or perhaps he had been paid to be there: ‘Maybe Kris [Jenner, Kylie’s mother and manager] wrote him a big fat check to take her special little girl as his date. He probably made more on this date than his take home from the movie.’
In one discussion group on social media forum Reddit, it was suggested Chalamet’s former fans planned to physically attack him on the red carpet and, disgracefully, shared a method. In the event, there was no such action taken.
Kylie Jenner, 27, and Timothee Chalamet, 29, enjoy a night out at the Golden Globes
Kylie with Travis Scott, the father of her two children, at the 2019 Met Gala in New York
So why can’t anyone accept that Jenner, 27, and Chalamet – known as Kylothee – are simply a happy young couple? Will they be able to withstand the pressure of the social media ill-wishers – and is this the real thing?
Their romance started in Paris in January 2023, when both were invited to attend a Jean Paul Gaultier show during Paris Fashion Week.
They connected, realised they had a number of friends in common and a shared taste in music. Both are also said to have a ‘goofy’ sense of humour.
Jenner had recently – and apparently finally – split from rapper Travis Scott, the father of her two young children. Chalamet had been single for a while, and had previously dated Madonna’s daughter Lourdes (they were at school together in New York; he was her first love), so he wasn’t put off by Jenner’s fame.
They started to date ‘casually’ and by the time the news emerged in April 2023, the relationship was still low-key. Few at the time saw it working as they are such different people, from very different backgrounds.
Kylie has grown up in the bubble of extreme fame in Los Angeles, thanks to Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the family’s reality TV show, and has gone from being a sulky schoolgirl to superstar, her looks being radically altered along the way thanks to apparent cosmetic interventions.
She had some tough teenage years when her parents announced they were separating and her father, Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner, announced that he was transitioning to become a woman, reemerging as Caitlyn Jenner.
Kylie said later that she would go to her bedroom after filming and ‘cry and cry’. She complained: ‘I dream about being normal.’
Aged 14, Jenner and her sister Kendall, who is two years older, collaborated on a clothing line.
At 18, she left home and launched her first cosmetics line, Kylie’s Lip Kit, which has grown into Kylie Cosmetics, a $750million (£600million) empire that has made her the family’s highest earner. Her products now include clothing and a range of canned cocktails.
Jenner’s own pout has been created using fillers – which she has denied, admitted, denied and admitted again. She says she was driven by insecurity to dabble in cosmetic work as a teenager after a boy remarked that she didn’t look like she would be a ‘good kisser’.
Now she has a £9.5million mansion in LA stuffed with Warhols, so many handbags they require their own walk-in wardrobe and dining chairs in pink leather chosen to match her own lipstick shades.
She has two children with Scott – Stormi, born in February 2018, and Aire, born after a break-up and reconciliation, in February 2022. She collects modern art and absurdly flashy sports cars.
Jenner, then, is a commercially triumphant expression of the all-about-money West Coast culture in which she was raised. Chalamet, who grew up in New York, is very different.
His parents – his mother was a dancer; his French father an editor – are immersed in the arts and he was raised in a block which gives subsidised rents to people who are in the creative industries and earn a ‘moderate’ income.
The couple’s romance started in Paris in January 2023, when both were invited to attend a Jean Paul Gaultier show during Paris Fashion Week
He said only last month: ‘I grew up in arts housing, Manhattan Plaza, which is a funky way to grow up. I could try to paint it negatively to you. I could try to paint it positively, but it’s a bit of everything. It’s nuanced.’
He went to the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, following in the footsteps of his mother and older sister Pauline, and footage of him performing, embarrassingly, as rapper ‘Timmy Tim’ is out there on YouTube.
Acting was always his passion. He told an interviewer that a line in a play where his character is ‘using poetry as some kind of ladder to climb out of a hole’ resonated because: ‘I’ve been using acting as a ladder. It’s the one thing that fulfils me.’
Chalamet was a child star, with a small part in Law & Order followed by bigger roles in TV series Homeland and, in 2014, the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar.
His breakthrough role was in the movie Call Me By Your Name in 2017, which has been followed by Dune, Bones And All, Wonka and now the Bob Dylan biopic, which will be released in UK cinemas later this month.
He is being touted for an Oscar nomination for that performance, which would make him one of the youngest to be so honoured. Friends include directors Luca Guadagnino, Zendaya and Martin Scorsese. Throughout their relationship, he and Jenner have avoided walking the red carpet together, but she has attended the premieres of all his most recent films, and the after-parties.
Might they be working up to the mother of all red carpet appearances at the Academy Awards in March?
That might even be followed by what would be the biggest declaration of all – a Chalamet cameo on The Kardashians.
Kanye West made occasional appearances when he was married to Kylie’s sister Kim Kardashian – and Disney would surely be thrilled if Chalamet did the same.
It seems possible: numerous, well-placed sources say the couple are ‘very serious’ about each other and the relationship, after two years, is very much ‘stronger than ever’.
A source says: ‘Kylie is enjoying hanging out with Timothee and seeing where it goes.’
Her car was seen in the driveway of the £8.8million house he bought in LA. My source added: ‘She is getting to know him. Kylie is having fun.
‘After years of back and forth with Travis [Scott], she just wants to date without any pressure.’ The insider said Jenner’s family was supportive of her finding a new beau. ‘Everyone wants Kylie to move on,’ they said. ‘Everyone in the family is happy and supportive of Kylie dating.’
In July 2023, Scott seemed to aim barbs at Chalamet with a line from his song Meltdown, in which he mentioned ‘the Willy Wonka factory’ and laid down the challenge: ‘Find another flame hot as me, b****.’
A few weeks later, Jenner and Chalamet were spotted kissing at a Beyonce concert in Los Angeles, captured on video by a fellow fan.
A source told People magazine at the time: ‘They have been seeing each other for six months now. He makes Kylie happy.
‘He has his own life and understands Kylie needs to prioritise her kids. He is charming, very loving and protective of Kylie. She likes that he is a private guy.’
That autumn, they seemed to kick it up a notch.
The pair were together at a New York Fashion Week dinner in September and two days later were at the US Open, watching Novak Djokovic while cuddling in the stands.
During Milan Fashion Week, a picture was taken which revealed that her phone wallpaper was an image of the two of them.
In November, Chalamet was Jenner’s plus one when she was honoured by the Wall Street Journal with an innovators award, and she was there to support him when he hosted Saturday Night Live.
She then travelled to London by private jet to support him at the premiere of Wonka. Although she didn’t walk the red carpet, she was at the premiere and after-party.
Last January saw their biggest public display of affection – at the 2024 Golden Globes, where they were seen kissing.
They were then barely seen together as Chalamet filmed A Complete Unknown but, come the summer, the sightings – of them eating out or going to the cinema – started to tick up again.
In August, he was among guests who went to the Bahamas to celebrate Jenner’s 27th birthday.
At the time, a source told People magazine: ‘She’s incredibly happy with him. She’s never been in love like this before. He’s great for her.
‘Her family loves him. He’s so discreet and always has her back. He’s very much a gentleman and everything that Kylie deserves.’
They left the premiere of A Complete Unknown last month hand in hand, and are understood to have celebrated ‘pre-Christmas’ together as she spent the day with her mother Kris and her children.
Chalamet didn’t appear in any of the 20 images of the year that Kylie shared on Instagram to celebrate 2024, but he’s very much been part of it.
And, as their public display at the Golden Globes showed, it’s a relationship still going strong, no matter what Chalamaniacs say.
