Oscar-nominated actor, Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown, recently met Joan, now 84, at a Sweet Charity concert in San Francisco.
It must have been a very surreal moment for both of them.
I love JB’s t shirt. NOT DEAD YET.
Link to photos in the comments.
Monica got a thumbs up from Joan:
”But she looked enough like me and she had my gestures down. You could tell who it was. She worked so hard. Kudos to her for taking the role on.”
Have we any other examples of actors meeting people who they portrayed on films or on the stage?
Or of method actors going to preposterous extremes to get their character right?
Lada Gaga’s preparation for playing Patrizia Reggiani in The House of Gucci comes to mind.
Bio Reflexen are screening A Complete Unknown today and all 196 seats are gone.
And it’s not just oldies who want to see the film. Suddenly the Bobster is popular with the kids according to the Guardian.
Of course the film’s star could have something to do with this:
It’s a remarkable performance. Star of the moment Timothée Chalamet inhabits the loose-limbed, live-wire physicality of the young Bob Dylan and makes an impressively good fist of capturing the frayed hessian of his distinctive voice.
WENDY IDE, OBSERVER
Here is Monica meeting Joan.
https://nypost.com/2025/02/11/entertainment/a-complete-unknown-star-monica-barbaro-finally-met-joan-baez/
And here is that Guardian article I mentioned
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/04/bob-dylan-social-media-timothee-chalamet-a-complete-unknown
This is what Matt Thorne wrote:
More surprisingly, he’s become hip again, not just with long-term followers but with younger listeners, many adding his music to their playlists for the first time. And he has recaptured the zeitgeist via the most unlikely of means for an enigmatic, grouchy eightysomething: taking up posting on X as others abandon it, and endorsing a biopic, A Complete Unknown, that celebrates the first few years of his career, and conceding – as he has rarely done before – that his past might be as important as his present or future.
Finally, director James Mangold and his two actors talking about a key scene in the film.
And the originals: Joan and Bob performing that song at Newport
A month ago the AW had this excellent thread on A COMPLETE UNKNOWN.
So I really am a tad late to the party with this thread,
I was in two minds about seeing it at BIO REFLEXEN this evening, but one of colleagues, who was born in 1977 and is a cinephile rather than a music nerd, said that she thought it was an excellent film. She was right.
This evening I saw it and, somewhat to my surprise, thoroughly enjoyed it. Go and see it.
I suspected that Chamalet, who I last saw in Willy Wonka where he was wonderful, might be a distraction. Not at all. Give that man an Oscar!