How Timothée Chalamet Transformed Into a ’50s Ping-Pong Champ in Marty Supreme

Timothée Chalamet seems to have been channeling his Marty Supreme character ever since his SAG Award acceptance speech in February (“I’m really in pursuit of greatness,” he said at the time) and throughout his entire swaggy promo run leading up to the December 25 premiere. Is Timmy Marty, or is Marty Timmy?

“It’s true, there’s a lot of crossover,” the movie’s costume designer Miyako Bellizzi tells ELLE, also explaining that the movie had been in gestation since 2018, a year after writer-director Josh Safdie met Chalamet at a party in New York City. “It’s been a long time coming, and I have reason to believe that the [SAG] speech had something to do with Marty.”

For his gonzo turn as Marty Mauser, a relentlessly ambitious ping-pong hotshot from the hardscrabble alleys of the Lower East Side, circa 1952, Chalamet underwent a full transformation. He donned acne-scarred prosthetics, a unibrow, vision-degrading contact lenses, and period-authentic oversize trousers and strappy tank tops. His wispy dirtbag mustache, which may have started a trend, also reflects the ’50s, although the patchiness is all Chalamet.

“He’s really charismatic in this film and just gives such a powerful performance,” the movie’s makeup designer Kyra Panchenko says. “The look of Marty—makeup, hair, costumes—is so integrated with the character.”

The “Rough” Version of Timmy

Safdie’s longtime vision for Marty involved “pockmarked skin, acne, and scars” on Chalamet’s preternaturally unblemished complexion “to show a history of Marty living a rough life on the streets of the Lower East Side, and make it authentic,” explains Panchenko. “We were really trying to give him a lived-in, raw look and create an unrecognizable Timothée.”

Special effects designer Mike Fontaine created five prosthetics: two acne-scarred cheek pieces and three other ones, covered with nicks and faded scars, applied to the lower part of the face, which Chalamet preferred.

“They disappeared into his skin,” says Panchenko, who worked in tandem with Fontaine to trim his time in the makeup chair down from an hour and a half to 45 minutes. “Everyone thought, ‘Oh, Timmy’s skin looks pretty rough.’” Mission accomplished.

Marty’s Brows and Timmy’s Bad Vision

Marty’s piercing stare also conveys his determination and unstoppable drive—amplified by thick, untamed eyebrows inspired by the famed arches of silver-screen heartthrob Montgomery Clift.

“Josh loved [Clift’s] unique, intense look,” says Panchenko. “He even had little hairs sticking up and out.”

She recalls continuously drawing in Chalamet’s already abundant brows during initial makeup tests: “Josh kept going, ‘More, more!’” The final look entailed hand-laid additional hair onto a hand-drawn unibrow and Chalamet’s real eyebrows. “So they’re twice the size,” says Panchenko. “Sometimes they poke high above his glasses.”

Going somewhat method, Chalamet wore contact lenses that significantly impaired his vision, requiring noticeably dense +6-prescription glasses. “The thick lenses also made his eyes look smaller and more beady,” says Panchenko. “Again, a character choice, and we loved it.”

The ’50s Mustache

For Marty’s period-accurate ’stache, Panchenko collaborated with Chalamet and Safdie on the exact level of wispiness. “We kept getting thinner,” she says. “It’s a skinny mustache, not a full mustache.”

For grooming, she used clippers to shape it and trim the baby hairs along Chalamet’s lip line with scissors over a comb.

“That’s about it. It’s not a perfect mustache, like he went to a barber. It was messy,” says Panchenko, who incorporated Chalamet’s own capacity for facial hair growth. “Hairs are missing on the side because he has some patches of hair that aren’t there. So we left it. Imperfectly perfect, Marty.”

Old-Fashioned Curls

Marty’s passion and dedication to ping-pong helped inform Chalamet’s shift from his signature floppy hair. His lush ’50s fade and errant curls enhance the gravity of the messes Marty creates in his pursuit of greatness—and the stakes of his ping-pong battles.

Hair department head Kay Georgiou held multiple workshopping sessions with Safdie and Chalamet, who came in with longer hair as an ideal canvas. “Timothée was so great to work with and eager to create the look for Marty. He has this amazing head of hair, and he really enjoyed having his hair cut,” the two-time Oscar nominee tells ELLE over email. (But does he?)

Safdie kept requesting Georgiou go shorter. “I took it tighter in the nape, creating a soft fade, keeping the width at the sides, and having a heaviness on the top that would move and fall onto the forehead,” she says. “To really get the tightness and feel of the period, as well as be right for the character of Marty.”

Georgiou employed “mostly barbering techniques,” like thinning shears to progress the fade, a blow dryer to create Marty’s distinctive part, and American Crew Grooming Cream and Tres Flores Brilliantine, a favorite for period pieces, for styling.

“The movement in Timothée’s hair progressed naturally as he played in the ping-pong matches,” says Georgiou, also crediting hair stylist Jimmy Goode for giving twice-weekly haircuts for maintenance and continuity during filming.

Supreme Suits

Chalamet on the set of filming Marty Supreme in October 2024 in New York City.

To portray Marty as a dreamer and striver, Bellizzi—who costume-designed Safdie’s Uncut Gems and Good Time—prepared a litany of mid-century suits for Chalamet to try. Along with Safdie, they landed on Marty’s “hero suit,” a gray pinstriped late-’40s silhouette, with a broad-shouldered, V-shaped jacket and high-waisted trousers.

“It changed the way [Chalamet] looked,” Bellizzi says. “I remember it being this ‘a-ha!’ moment between Josh, him, and me. We’re like, ‘Wow, it looks different and you look more grown up.’”

While it’s not depicted in the movie, Safdie and co. created a backstory for how Marty—who starts off toiling at his uncle’s shoe store to fund his trip to the ping-pong championships in London—could afford a bespoke suit.

“He’s a hustler,” says Bellizzi, imagining that Marty spent his entire windfall from a successful con on the “fancy” purchase. “He always wanted to look really nice. He wanted to look like this grown, sophisticated man, even though he wasn’t. Fake it till you make it.”

Marty’s Conman-Cool Jacket

For a grift in New Jersey with best friend Wally (Tyler Okonma, a.k.a. Tyler, the Creator, in his film debut), Marty opts for casualwear instead of one of his two precious suits. To swindle a suburban bowling alley crowd, he works the room in a boxy, cropped navy bomber jacket, a light-blue knit polo, and baggy, high-waisted pants. Although, the marks should have clocked that Marty didn’t belong based on his too-cool outfit.

Bellizzi found inspiration for Marty’s hustler ’fit from Ken Jacobs’s 1955 documentary short Orchard Street, which also served as a “blueprint” for the Orchard Street denizens.

“Even then, people in the Lower East Side dressed differently than anyone else in the country—and in the world—with their sense of style,” says Bellizzi, who custom-designed Marty’s jaunty wool-gabardine bomber with red-piped lapels and striping on the ribbed waistband.

“That was new and super popular, so most guys in their 20s had a gab jacket to wear more casually than the suits,” continues Bellizzi. “It would be a little weird if he came into the bowling alley to hustle in a suit.”

The Essential White Tank Top

Marty’s white ribbed tank tops feel extra special, and not just for the specifically narrow straps and deep scoops at the armholes.

“Even if you don’t see it, he wears that undershirt every day, because that’s what men in that era did,” says Bellizzi, who attempted to custom-design the tank she envisioned but ended up hunting down real options from the time period. “They’re extremely hard to find, but I found a collector and bought the original box of six tanks from the ’50s. So we have one for him to wear every day of the week.”

The tanks enjoy a fair amount of screen time, like when a heavily perspiring Marty strips down during a vigorous ping-pong game, and when he flees down the fire escape and onto Orchard Street, evading the cops.

“That was a big part of his character because he is always derobing and he’s always changing,” says Bellizzi. “So it was nice to have that peeking throughout the whole film.”

Although one could say white ribbed tank tops are also an integral part of Chalamet’s persona, and he does like his oversize shirts and pants. But “Timmy did have a particular way that he presented—and even how he walked in this film—that’s different from who he is,” says Bellizzi.