Timothée Chalamet was not a big fan of Bob Dylan – or as he calls it a member of the Church of Bob - before being cast to play the music icon in the feature film “A Complete Unknown.” He quickly became a convert. “I'm a humble disciple now. The years I got to prepare for this role is unlike the time I've had for any other role. So, at some point it stopped becoming work and it just became a process of osmosis and just living in the material, living in the world of the sixties,” Chalamet says. There was plenty of material the young actor could use to play the role including the book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald that covered the early years of the singer/songwriter. Chalamet’s co-stars – from Edward Norton to Elle Fanning – also shared any tidbits they found. This was all used to make the movie that starts in New York in 1961 where the 19-year-old Dylan arrives to find a vibrant music scene and a tumultuous cultural upheaval. The Minnesota native forges relationships with music icons such as Pete Seeger (Norton) and Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) on his way to a meteoric rise in the music world. Despite all the resource material, Chalamet stresses that the film is not a dry academic look at Dylan. He credits director James Mangold with making the film more of “a fable.” “If you want to listen to the real music, you listen to the legend that is Bob Dylan or the legend that is Joan Baez. We were humble interpreters trying to bring life to something very special that happened 60, 70 years ago,” Chalamet says. And part of the interpretation for Chalamet was learning to play the guitar and be able to sing the Dylan songs. The decision to have the actor sing rather than use original recordings was based on Mangold’s experience directing the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line.” Mangold got push back when he suggested there would be no need for the original Dylan recordings. The director was told that the filmed scenes would never match because Chalamet’s tempo would change. That meant there would be no way to edit together a continuous version of the musical performances. His argument was having Chalamet deliver speaking lines in his own voice and then using Dylan’s voice for the singing would make Chalamet look like a ventriloquist dummy. The confidence Mangold had that Chalamet could handle the singing was matched by the devotion the actor showed in learning how to perform the tunes. “I tried to clear the way for the idea that everyone would sing their own parts and play their own parts. But Timmy kind of took it up another level in the sense that we laid down all these as part of our preparation,” Mangold says. “We laid down what'll be a soundtrack album full of music in the studio. “But then we started shooting and the first scene with singing in it that we did was the one in which he sings a song for Woody to Woody Guthrie in the hospital. And Timmy came to me and said, ‘I just want to do it.’ All I did was run interference for him in the sense of going, ‘Whatever happens, we can fix it later’." It helped that Chalamet came to the production with some experience singing in a film having starred in “Wonka.” His other works include the “Dune” films, “Call Me by Your Name” and “Little Women.” Mangold was so impressed with the musical performances by Chalamet and the rest of the cast, he had enough material to put together a six-hour version of the film. He ended up with a running time of 141 minutes. One person who was impressed by Chalamet’s singing skills was Fanning who plays Dylan’s girlfriend Sylvie Russo (who is based on Dylan’s real girlfriend Suze Rotolo). She points to a scene where she had to sit with an audience watching a performance as being a very emotional experience. “I don't have any lines or anything, but I am sitting in the audience, and I remember I had such an anticipation, like butterflies, I was so excited,” Fanning says. “I felt like much all of us in that room. They're background artists that are with us, but you could feel like this bubbling anticipation. “They knew what they were about to see but I didn't know what to expect. Obviously, I know he's a brilliant actor, and I was like, ‘Of course he's going to knock it out of the park.’ It was just so beautiful to see. It moved me. I had tears rolling down.” How all his work helped Chalamet portray Dylan can be seen in the movie that opens in theaters on Dec. 24.