It’s well known that actors can go to great lengths to play their characters – Robert De Niro famously put on close to 30kg to play boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, and Daniel Day-Lewis practically lived in a wheel chair and insisted on being spoon-fed by crew to play a man with cerebal palsy in My Left Foot.
But Timothée Chalamet has taken a very different path.
To prepare for his Oscar-nominated role in the film Marty Supreme, he deliberately made his eyesight worse and drew on the experience of an optometrist to make it happen.
According to a story published on news.com.au, optometrist Dr Mitchell Cassel temporarily blurred the actor’s vision so he could authentically experience what it’s like to rely on the thick glasses worn by US table tennis legend Marty Reisman.
“To truly embody Marty, he needed very realistic-looking glasses, with a certain thickness and myopic or narrow-looking eyes,” Dr Cassel said. “Timothée wanted the glasses to feel earned rather than costume. The goal was to not only deliver thick lenses but to create the experience of needing them.”
Cassel began the process with a comprehensive eye exam to determine Chalamet’s baseline eye health.
“From there, I fit him in contact lenses to blur him out. We used daily disposables for ultimate safety. In contacts, his vision was bad, giving glasses a real reason to exist and creating the exact optical effect his character had.”
Without the glasses, Chalamet’s vision was deliberately compromised. But with them on, his eyesight returned to normal — the result of a carefully calibrated optical balance.
Cassel said the actor’s vision was altered only in a reversible and highly controlled way.
