David Michôd has always been drawn to the stories that frighten him the most. As a kid, it was your standard horror stuff-evil men with masks and chainsaws, gruesome creatures, the awful surprise lurking in the dark. Now, as an adult... well, you can figure out what frightens the director by watching his movies. Each is set in a completely different world-modern Australia ( Animal Kingdom), a future dystopia ( The Rover), a top American military outfit in Afghanistan ( War Machine), Middle Ages England ()-but they're all, more or less, about the same thing: delusional men in positions of great power-sound familiar?

Take The King, which hits theaters on Friday (and Netflix early next month). It's lightly inspired by Shakespeare's Henry V. Timothée Chalamet, with a truly historic bowl cut, plays the idealistic King Henry V at the beginning of his reign. As he takes the throne, he vows to be a different sort of leader than his father-more tolerant and fair, more committed to peace. But it's all easier as a goal than in practice. Convention, the people around him, and the burdens of power draw him into the same trappings; he's destined to repeat his father's mistakes, even as he's determined not to.

Michôd says he didn't set out to make another installation in his Delusional Man canon. Though he's become aware of his preoccupation with the subject, that he keeps on returning there, he says, has just sort of happened. "It either suggests to me that I am one of these delusional men or I am afraid of these delusional men."

GQ spoke to Michôd about power, the quality Timothée Chalamet shares with Robert Pattionson and Brad Pitt, and becoming Hollywood's most notorious hair stylist.

GQ: Do you enjoy giving really handsome actors terrible haircuts?

David Michod: [ Laughs.] Yes, I do. It brings me great pleasure. But Rob [Pattinson]' s haircut in The Rover was entirely his creation. And justifiably, with Timmy and The King, everyone was a bit nervous about what we were going to do with his head. But I had faith always that we weren't going to give him a truly horrific Medieval bowl cut. And even if we had, somehow that Timmy Chalamet kid would find a way of making it hot.

Guy Pierce's haircut in The Rover might be the worst.

And Guy did it himself. He took a pair of scissors home two nights before we started shooting and just chopped his own hair off. That one was his fault too.

Do you have a favorite?

Rob's in The Rover was one I actually started seeing on everybody. That was way ahead of its time. That's how plugged in Rob Pattinson is. But I think Timmy's in ​The King ​is kind of cool. I'm almost half-tempted to get one myself.

Let's talk Chalamet! What about him made him a fit for King Henry V?

When Joel [Edgerton] and I first started writing this thing, Timmy didn't even exist in my mind. It wasn't until right around the time that we were trying to put the movie together that he entered my orbit. Prior to that, I had been picturing something with a young, strong, strapping man doing young, tough, strong, strapping stuff. Seeing Call Me By Your Name showed me a version of The King that suddenly excited me so much more, which was the story of a true kind of boy king.

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