Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet had his eyesight altered – temporarily having his vision blurred – so he could authentically portray what it was like to rely on thick glasses for his role in Marty Supreme.
According to a report in news.com.au, optometrist Dr Mitchell Cassel intentionally made the actor’s eyesight worse.1
“Timothée doesn’t need glasses, but Marty did. Timothée wanted his performance to be anchored by authenticity,” Dr Cassel told Page Six.
To truly embody real-life table tennis legend Marty Reisman, “he needed very realistic-looking glasses, with a certain thickness and myopic or narrow-looking eyes”, Dr Cassel said.
“Timothée wanted the glasses to feel earned rather than costume… I started with a comprehensive eye exam to assess his baseline eye health, confirm his visual acuity, and determine his corneal measurements,” Dr Cassel said.
Daily disposable contact lenses were then used to “blur him out”, however with the glasses, his eyesight returned to normal.
“The key was creating a very controlled optical balance. I first used contact lenses to introduce a specific level of blur, essentially simulating Marty’s baseline reality,” Dr Cassel explained.
“From there, I designed the eyeglass prescription to precisely counteract that blur. When the two worked together, his vision returned to normal, but the glasses themselves had the thickness and visual characteristics you would expect from someone with genuinely poor eyesight.”
He said that, ultimately, Chalamet “needed” the eyewear so that “small behaviours you see in people who actually wear glasses started to appear organically – how he looked through the lenses, how he adjusted them, how he focused on objects or people”.
Reference
- Real E, How Timothée Chalamet intentionally ruined his vision for his role in ‘Marty Supreme’, news.com.au, 13 March 2025 available at: pagesix.com/2026/03/13/entertainment/how-timothee-chalamet-intentionally-ruined-his-vision-for-marty-supreme/ [accessed Mar 2026].
