“I saw him,” said Charlotte Barbié, 18, who stood outside the SVA Theater on Friday night, shaking from either the cold or the excitement. “He was blond.”
She indicated her white Adidas sneaker had just been signed in black marker by the actor Timothée Chalamet.
Ms. Barbié stood among a gaggle of young fans who shrieked when Mr. Chalamet arrived at the New York premiere of “A Complete Unknown,” the Bob Dylan biopic in which he stars that has been nominated for three Golden Globes.
The premiere took place just down West 23rd Street from the fabled Manhattan hotel where Mr. Dylan had lived 60 years earlier. The film, directed by James Mangold, traces Mr. Dylan’s arrival in New York as a teenager and his ascent through the Greenwich Village music scene.
Mr. Chalamet sang live in the movie and said he had spent five years working with a harmonica coach to nail the singer’s mannerisms. Although his dark hair is tousled to Dylanesque proportions in the film, on Friday, it was blond and straight, sticking out from a turquoise beanie. Mr. Chalamet appeared to be dressed as Mr. Dylan had at a Sundance Film Festival appearance in 2003 for the premiere of the film “Masked and Anonymous,” which the musician starred in and co-wrote.
“A Complete Unknown,” which will be released in theaters on Dec. 25, is based on the 2015 book “Dylan Goes Electric!” by Elijah Wald, which recounts the years leading up to Mr. Dylan’s polarizing performance with electric instruments at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
Elle Fanning, a real-life Dylan superfan who plays Sylvie Rosso, a fictionalized version of Mr. Dylan’s girlfriend Suze Rotolo, arrived in a butter-yellow gown, happy to discuss the period’s parallels to the present.
“Politically, there was a lot of unrest at that time, like today,” Ms. Fanning said. “But I think what is inspiring to me about the film is that in that space and time, Dylan taking the risk and doing something so small as picking up an electric guitar revolutionized music forever.”
Her favorite lyric of Mr. Dylan’s, she said, was from “The Times They Are a-Changin’”: “And don’t criticize what you can’t understand.”
Elsewhere on the carpet was the actress Monica Barbaro, who plays the folk singer Joan Baez, and Edward Norton, who grips a five-string banjo as the musician and activist Pete Seeger. The actress Edie Falco sped by wearing denim on denim, and the playwright Jeremy O. Harris chatted in maroon cowboy boots.
Just before 8 p.m, the cast members and their guests grabbed boxes of popcorn with Mr. Chalamet’s face on them and filed into the theater.
The film joins a string of projects based on Mr. Dylan’s life, including “No Direction Home,” a 2005 documentary by Martin Scorsese, and “I’m Not There,” a 2007 film by Todd Haynes in which six actors played the musician.
What, exactly, does Mr. Dylan think of this latest rendition? The question was difficult to answer until last week, when he posted an endorsement of Mr. Chalamet on X that seemed to hint at the strangeness of seeing so many versions of oneself onscreen.
“Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me,” Mr. Dylan wrote. “Or a younger me. Or some other me.”
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