At 14, Pauline Chalamet Fell In Love & Danced The Nutcracker

At 14 years old, Pauline Chalamet made money as many teenagers do — babysitting — and in one way most of them don’t: performing in The Nutcracker. “You’re not paid a lot, but you’re paid,” she tells Bustle, recalling her last year in the classic holiday show. But between training at the School of American Ballet and piano and singing lessons, she didn’t have time to do (or buy) very much.

“My social life really was my ballet friends,” Chalamet says. “And the thing that I would spend money on was maybe getting a slice of pizza.”

The 30-year-old actor is currently starring in the second season of HBO Max’s The Sex Lives of College Girls. Unlike her character Kimberly, who hails from the self-described “whitest town in the world,” Chalamet grew up in New York City — Manhattan Plaza, to be exact, a historic apartment building largely occupied by artists. Though she would study ballet well into her teens, 2006 was a year of transition. She wanted to go to high school where she’d been attending middle school, a performing arts school for professional children, but her parents insisted on the famed LaGuardia High School instead.

“I remember feeling like, I don’t want to go to stupid LaGuardia, f*ck LaGuardia,” Chalamet says. “And then I started LaGuardia, and I’m like, LaGuardia is actually great.”

The school — whose alumni include Jennifer Aniston, Nicki Minaj, and, eventually, Chalamet’s little brother, Timothée — was where she first sensed that dance might not be her whole world anymore. “I auditioned for the drama department, and that was the awakening of, maybe I want to do something in acting,” she says.

While revisiting her journal from this time in her life, Chalamet notes that she was getting “very hard on [herself]” in her password-protected Microsoft Word annals. “You’re a young professional,” she says. “So I read through these entries where I’m talking about what I’m eating and what I’m doing, and I’m like, oh, man! But that was what it was like for me at 14 — I had to be super aware of those kinds of things.”

Below, Chalamet opens up about her first love, her 14-year-old fashion sense, and what brings her back to that age today.

Take me back to 2006. You said you kept a journal — what did you glean from looking back at those entries?

They were pretty angsty — my emotions were completely black and white. Sometimes, I would do a lot of curse words, like, I don’t want to see their stupid-ass face. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I would let myself try to do that. But then, sometimes, I’d also put little asterisks.

What kind of student were you?

I was a relatively good student, academically. If a teacher said something or did something I didn’t like, I responded. I had a lot of attitude. But when I felt that the teacher was someone I could trust or someone who saw and understood me, they became my everything.

And what about your personal life — how were you feeling about growing up?

Fourteen is when I fell in love for the first time. Like, really fell in love. I remember the feeling of having a group sleepover, and he was there, and just like, oh my God! We were lying next to each other, playing all these games. It was a literal awakening. But I didn’t really know what that meant. I felt embarrassed about it, too.

Did that first love ever pan out?

No, it didn’t. We’re very good friends to this day, but we never met at the right time romantically, which is for the best.

There are such strong emotions at that age — maybe sometimes you just need to be a teenager on your own for a little while.

Yeah, it felt like those emotions were more about me than they were about him. He might have been evoking them. But at night, I was projecting and imagining things that weren’t at all [related to him]. But it’s funny, I remember being 14 about to turn 15, and I was like, This is the end of my childhood. I’m saying goodbye. In another 15 years, I’m gonna have kids, I’m gonna be married. Like, what are you talking about?

What was your sense of style at the time?

I wore whatever I wanted. I had these crazy patch pants that I got at the Christmas market at Bryant Park and would wear those with giant heels. I would wear either high-heeled shoes or running sneakers — there was no middle ground. Nothing simple, nothing normal.

Were you thinking about college at 14? Which of the Sex Lives main characters would you have aspired to be back then?

Oh my god, if I were 14 and thinking about college, it would be Leighton all day. I did a few years in a private school in middle school that were scary socially, and my dream was to be like one of those girls. To just have that family, and the attitude, and the confidence — even though [we] learn more about Leighton — but presenting that way, that would be my go-to.

What makes you feel 14 today — for better or for worse?

Sometimes when I’m watching movies, I get so wholeheartedly invested in what’s happening. It brings me back to watching The O.C., for instance, when Ben McKenzie or Adam Brody was on screen, and I felt sexually awakened. Now, it’s different scenarios. I just saw Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice at a showing near me — the story is much more mature than what I was watching at 14, but I felt the same pull.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.