In ‘A Complete Unknown,’ Why Was Bob Dylan’s Girlfriend’s Name Changed? Get to Know the Real Sylvie Russo
The Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown is full of actors playing big names from the ’60s, including Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Scoot McNairy as Woody Guthrie, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. But mixed in among all the familiar names is one that Dylan fans haven’t heard before — Elle Fanning will be playing a character named Sylvie Russo, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan’s early girlfriend who appeared with him on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and is often credited with encouraging him to focus on political themes in his music.
Why was Suze Rotolo the only major figure from Dylan’s early career who name was changed for the movie? And who was the real woman behind the character?
Who was Suze Rotolo?
Rotolo was born in Queens, New York, in 1943. Soon after graduating from high school, she became involved with political causes like the Congress of Racial Equality, where she was working when she met Dylan. The two were introduced to each other by Suze’s sister Carla during a folk concert at New York City’s Riverside Church in July 1961. In his memoir Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan wrote of their first meeting, “Right from the start I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. She was fair skinned and golden haired, full-blood Italian … We started talking and my head started to spin.”
What was her relationship with Bob Dylan like?
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The two became a couple quickly, and moved in together in early 1962. Rotolo is often credited as having influenced Dylan to write the political songs that made him famous; Dylan told a biographer that he often ran his lyrics by Rotolo because “her father and her mother were associated with unions and she was into this equality-freedom thing long before I was.”
But Dylan’s rising profile was stressful for Rotolo. She wrote in her own memoir, A Freewheelin’ Time, that “He required committed backup and protection I was unable to provide consistently, probably because I needed them myself. … I could no longer cope with all the pressure, gossip, truth and lies that living with Bob entailed.”
In the summer of 1962, she left Dylan for a six-month long trip to study art in Italy, a separation engineered by her mother (who hated Dylan), and one that inspired some of Dylan’s greatest early work, like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.”
Their relationship began to collapse upon her return in 1963 due to a variety of factors, including her family’s disapproval of the arrangement and Dylan’s open affair with Joan Baez — though not before taking their famous photo, which graced the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, in February 1963. Rotolo moved out of their shared apartment in August 1963 and they officially broke up in 1964.
In his memoir, Dylan wrote of their break-up, “It had to end. She took one turn in the road and I took another.”
Dylan also detailed their break-up in “Ballad in Plain D,” a song with lyrics that paint Rotolo’s sister Carla as a “parasite” but praise Suze as “gentle like a fawn” and hope that her next boyfriend will “be fully aware of how precious she is.”
What did she do after Dylan?
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After the break-up, Rotolo married in 1967, had one son, worked as a visual artist, and stayed politically active. She resisted speaking publicly about her relationship with Dylan for decades. But in the early 2000s, she participated in the 2005 PBS documentary, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, and released her own memoir of the ’60s, A Freewheelin’ Time, in 2008. Rotolo died in 2011 from lung cancer, at the age of 67.
Why did the movie change her name?
Given Rotolo’s close association with Dylan, it’s notable that she’s the one major character whose real name isn’t used. According to a Dec. 11, 2024 Rolling Stone article, “At the request of Dylan himself, her name was changed to Sylvie Russo in the movie.” Though no specific reason is given for this, it may be because Rotolo has passed away. Though several of the real-life characters depicted in the film are dead, including Johnny Cash and Woody Guthrie, Rotolo’s romantic relationship with Dylan is depicted so intimately, perhaps he felt uncomfortable including her name without her explicit permission. We can only guess, as the famously enigmatic Dylan will likely never give a public explanation.
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