Dame Eileen Atkins and Timothée Chalamet

Dame Eileen Atkins and Timothée Chalamet are coming to The Old Vic

By Kitty Underwood First Published 20 November 2019, Last Updated 21 November 2019

Dame Eileen Atkins and Timothée Chalamet are coming to The Old Vic next Spring!

Directed by Matthew Warchus, Timothée and Dame Eileen will play the lead roles in Amy Herzog’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama nominated play 4000 Miles from 16 April next year.

Dame Eileen Atkins has a long and impressive rap-sheet of TV, theatre and film. She’s won three Olivier Awards and been nominated for four Tony Awards. Famously, she was one of the co-creators of British TV classic, Upstairs, Downstairs. She was given a CBE in 1990 and a DBE in 2001 for her contribution to the arts.

Timothée Chalamet similarly needs no introduction. Though he’d already starred in Homeland and Interstellar, Timothée burst into wider recognition with his supporting role in Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age film Lady Bird, and his lead role in Call Me By Your Name in 2017. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the third-youngest nominee ever in the category. Most recently, he’s been gracing our screens as King Henry V in period drama based on Shakespeare’s Henriad – The King.

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4000 Miles is a story about family, loss and breaching the chasms between generations.

At the beginning of the summer 21-year-old Leo set out from the West Coast cycling across America with his best friend. After weeks of radio silence, no one is more surprised than his 91-year-old grandmother, Vera, when Leo turns up on her Manhattan doorstep in the middle of the night.

His life just starting, hers nearly ended, in a faded Greenwich Village apartment their griefs collide.

4000 Miles is part of Old Vic Artistic Director Matthew Warchus’ Season 5, which includes A Christmas CarolEndgame (in a double bill with Rough for Theatre II) and Local Hero. Speaking on the announcement he said:

“Amy Herzog is one of my favourite living writers – she writes with a deceptively powerful simplicity, full of extraordinary grace, precision and radiance. I’m very much looking forward to working with this exceptional cast on her gorgeous play which abounds with intimate beauty and truth.”

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