Meet the 'Russian Timothée Chalamet' who Auditioned in the Raw for Sean Baker's New Movie

Mark Eidelstein – also known as Mark Eydelshteyn – is embracing his rep as "the Russian Timothée Chalamet" (an immediately understandable comparison, given his trim build and dark, unruly mane of curly hair), but he may soon be better known as the actor who won a role in Sean Baker's new movie thanks to a nude audition video.

Eidelstein is a rising actor in his native Russia, Variety noted, and it was from having starred in a sci-fi series called "Guest From the Future" with Yura Borisov that he got an in to Baker's new movie "Anora" when Borisov won a role, the magazine relayed.

Eidelstein auditioned for the part of Ivan, the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch who goes wild without parental supervision in New York. However, the actor didn't have the sort of costly wardrobe that a rich kid like Ivan would have. He would have to make do – and get creative.

"So I immediately realized I had to be nude," the actor explained to the entertainment outlet.

Of course.

Variety referred to the young actor as "a Russian Timothée Chalamet," which, Eidelstein revealed, is a moniker he's already heard back in his native Russia.

"For me, it's a mind-blowing situation, because in Russian people are saying I'm a Russian Timothée Chalamet and now you're saying it in English ... it's crazy, it's like a joke that has gone out of control," Eidelstein exclaimed.

"It did become a little annoying," he added, "but then I watched 'Dune,' and now I think he's probably one of the best actors of my generation. Him and Barry Keoghan."

The resourceful actor has more than his Chalamet-like good looks and his willingness to shed shyness and garments for the camera; in another stroke of inventiveness for his audition video Eidelstein made a vape into a prop which, he admitted, gave him something to do while he tried to remember the lines. ("Anora" is his first English-language film.)

Baker – the director of the 2015 trans sex worker drama "Tangerine" and 2021's Simon Rex-starring "Red Rocket" – was suitably impressed. "Sean said, 'Mark, it's amazing – and the vape! – it's so Ivan! It's his character, you'd really captured it! Wow!'" the 22-year-old actor related.

In Baker's movie, Eidelstein's Ivan "falls in love with Mikey Madison's Manhattan sex worker Ani," Variety said. "It's a wild ride from start to finish, awash in drugs, sex, violence, gangsters, Vegas weddings and a lounge full of expensive ornaments getting smashed to pieces."

And smash is the operative word; "Anora" has evidently already achieved that status at Cannes.

Check out some of Eidelstein's Insta pics and decide for yourself if "the Russian Timothée Chalamet" is a fitting sobriquet for the actor.